files/FfoX2GcSfKSBysQSVTik aceprev mccarthy
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ANNIVERSARY ANN NNIVER IVERSARY IVER
SPOTLIGHT
Sponsored by:
A&WMA’s Keynote Speaker
Gina McCarthy Ballroom BC, Raleigh Convention Center, 4th Floor
This year’s keynote session promises to be something very special, and not to be missed. Featured speaker, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, known for her straight-talking and
by Erica Martinson, politicopro.com
down to earth demeanor, will be joined by an esteemed panel of environmental experts, including Donald R. van der Vaart, Secretary, North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources; Cari P. Boyce, Vice President, Environmental and Energy Policy, Duke Energy (Official 2015 Annual Conference Sponsor); and Vickie Patton, General Counsel, Environmental Defense Fund. Obama’s Climate Change Wonk Gina McCarthy may be at the front line of the bitter climate change battle between President Barack Obama and Republicans, but that’s not how she sees it. As the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), she’s the face of Obama’s plan that will, for the first time in U.S. history, regulate the amount of carbon dioxide released by the nation’s fleet of power plants as part of the strategy to shrink the pollution that scientists blame for global warming. This summer, the EPA will issue its rule forcing each state to design plans to cut their utilities’ carbon emissions—requirements that officials in many coal-dependent states say could threaten their power grids and Republicans warn will destroy the economy, but which advocates say are crucial to begin to slow global warming. “I know that I’m a political appointee, but I feel so strongly that the work that I do is not political,” she told POLITICO during a recent interview from her office. awma.org
04_EM0615-CS-ACE-Preview-2.indd 7
The plan has ignited controversy for bypassing Congress and made her agency a target for Hill Republicans, who contend the Obama administration is pursuing a radical green agenda, and they have vowed to strip the funding for EPA’s efforts. And with this month’s departure of Obama adviser John Podesta—considered by many to be the biggest climate hawk in the White House— the onus falls squarely on McCarthy to bring the transformational regulations across the finish line, a task that will test the 60-year-old cabinet member’s nearly three decades of experience in forging environmental rules. In the meantime, she’s drawn a backlash from more than a dozen states, anger from the entrenched power sector and protests from the Republicans who control Congress—challenges not unlike the ones that former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius faced when rolling out Obamacare, another White House policy that threatened to upend a major slice of the U.S. economy. Nevertheless, even many of her opponents agree that McCarthy is particularly well-suited for the
Copyright 2015 Air & Waste Management Association
Gina McCarthy
Editor’s Note: This article profiling Gina McCarthy first appeared online February 20, 2015, at POLITICOPro.com, a subscription news site, and is reproduced here with permission. june 2015 em 7
5/20/15 8:25 AM
em • annual conference preview
“I’m not somebody who wasn’t in the field before they took a position like this … I make sure that everybody knows it as well as I know it, and I try to know it as well as the level below me knows it.”
job. She’s no wallflower and often pulls laughs out of even the most antagonistic crowds. Her history working for Republican governors like Mitt Romney and her straight-talking demeanor create an easy rapport with some of EPA’s detractors, and her affinity for the details of regulatory policy can keep her grounded in the practical rather than the political issues.
“However, I completely disagree with her and this administration on their climate agenda and will continue to do everything I can to overturn these policies,” the House Energy and Power Subcommittee chairman said.
“I’m not somebody who wasn’t in the field before they took a position like this,” she said. “So I think I’m challenging to work for, because I make sure that everybody knows it as well as I know it, and I try to know it as well as the level below me knows it.”
Other powerful agency opponents include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who made support of coal and attacking the EPA a centerpiece of his reelection campaign in Kentucky last year, as well as Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, who has regularly targeted the agency and has accused it of collaborating with green groups to create overreaching policies.
Obama unveiled his Climate Action Plan in 2013 after telling Congress in his State of the Union address that if lawmakers wouldn’t address climate change, the administration would act on its own. That main component of Obama’s push is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, a set of regulations built off the Clean Air Act that will drive the biggest change in the nation’s power supply since Washington moved to end the utility industry’s dependence on oil in the 1970s. EPA’s regulatory efforts also provide leverage for the administration in its diplomatic efforts to reach an international pact at the Paris climate change summit late this year, showing that the U.S. is willing to take the same type For more DETAILS and of action at home that it’s seeking from to REGISTER for the other nations. conference and/or any of the events mentioned on Opponents have ripped into EPA’s the following pages, go to: plans, warning the power plant regulaace2015.awma.org tions would kill the coal industry, drive electricity prices up and put the power grid at risk of failing as the rules forced
04_EM0615-CS-ACE-Preview-2.indd 8
Still, critics refrain from criticizing McCarthy. She wins praise from even EPA’s staunchest opponents, including lawmakers from coal-heavy states, such as Kentucky Rep. Ed Whitfield, who said he’s got great respect for her.
Unlike Sebelius, the former governor of Kansas who was chased out of her HHS position after the disastrous early rollout of the Affordable Care Act, McCarthy’s policy wonk credentials were earned at state environmental agencies in Connecticut and her home state of Massachusetts before she came to Washington.
— Gina McCarthy
8 em june 2015
power plants offline. They warn that the agency is trying to do too much too fast, and the unintended consequences could be costly and long-lasting.
And Sen. Jim Inhofe, (R-Okla.), who now heads the Environment and Public Works committee, has long butted heads with EPA. He’s accused the agency’s “unelected bureaucrats” of making “unreasonable assumptions” about the state of climate change science. He’s decried the Clean Power Plan, saying recently it would “cost billions; it will increase our energy bills… [and] it still is not going to reduce the CO2 emissions worldwide.” The Senate leaders have made it clear that they intend to go after the EPA in appropriations later in the year. They’ll hold votes trying to repeal the regulations once they are final, and there will be a barrage of bill amendments that aim for the proposals to suffer a death by a thousand cuts. In the House, Rep. Lamar Smith, the Science Committee chairman, has led much of the opposition to EPA, contending the agency hasn’t been open with its scientific data. The final power plant regulations EPA will release this summer will generally leave it up to states to
Copyright 2015 Air & Waste Management Association
awma.org
5/19/15 3:00 PM
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ANNIVERSARY ANN NNIVER IVERSARY IVER
When you’re ready to apply principles of sustainability. You are ready for American Public University. With more than 90 degrees to choose from, there’s almost no end to what you can learn. Pursue a respected Environmental Science degree or certifcate online — at a cost that’s 20% less than the average published in-state rates at public universities.*
Visit StudyatAPU.com/em-mag
BEST ONLINE PROGRAMS
*College Board: Trends in College Pricing, 2013. We want you to make an informed decision about the university that’s right for you. For more about our graduation rates, the median debt of students who completed each program, and other important information, visit www.apus.edu/disclosure.
decide how to meet individual CO2 reduction targets set by the agency. The plans are varied, and some of the proposed targets are likely to change in the final rule. And just this week, McCarthy hinted to utility commissioners that the agency is seriously reconsidering what cuts it will require by 2020. Many states have said EPA is asking for too much, too soon. It’s a complex undertaking, one that requires the agency McCarthy leads to get the technical details just right and avoid any legal mishaps, all while conducting a difficult behind-the-scenes effort to apply political pressure to reluctant state governments. It’s a tall order for the hard-charging McCarthy, whose accent is a quick tip-off that she hails from south Boston. Her husband and three grown children still reside there, as does her dog Emma, and she often breaks out of the Beltway for weekends at home, where she loves bike rides around her Jamaica Plain neighborhood. awma.org
04_EM0615-CS-ACE-Preview-2.indd 9
BACHELOR’S
2015
McCarthy came to EPA during Obama’s first term to head the air office under the previous EPA chief Lisa Jackson before undergoing a grueling confirmation fight to join the cabinet. Prior to that, she worked under then-Gov. Mitt Romney in her native Massachusetts before heading up Connecticut’s environmental agency. “There’s really only once place to get any kind of real experience for running EPA,” and that’s by directing a state environmental agency, said Carol Browner, a Clinton administration EPA Administrator and former Obama climate adviser. McCarthy agrees her background is a major asset in running the agency that’s not only responsible for the carbon rules, but is developing proposals to cut ozone pollution, reduce methane leaks from oil and gas wells and expand EPA’s reach over new waterways and wetlands. She’s steeped in the technical details and legal
Copyright 2015 Air & Waste Management Association
june 2015 em 9
5/19/15 3:00 PM
em • annual conference preview
She sees her role as turning the goals of the Obama administration into a workable policy more than directing her team on how to navigate the precedents of the existing law.
mechanisms of the carbon cutting plan that would require states to lower the emissions from their existing power plants and force any new coalfired power plants to use costly and still largely unproven carbon capture technology. But she sees her role as turning the goals of the Obama administration into a workable policy more than directing her team on how to navigate the precedents of the existing law. “I tend not to read the rule language because I rely on the lawyers to make sure where commas go, but I really like reading the preamble because I think it’s important for us to speak to everyday people about what it means, what the law tells us to do, what the science is that we understand it, and how to apply it, and what that means to them,” McCarthy said. “I think it’s enormously important.” She may be more policy wonk than politician, but McCarthy’s begun playing a more visible public role to try to help sell Obama’s environmental initiatives. In the last month, she’s talked climate change with X Games snow boarders in Aspen, delivered a speech about the threats posed by pollution at a World Health Organization meeting in Geneva and met with Pope Francis’s top advisers at the Vatican.
Complicating her task is the departure of Podesta, who exited the White House this month to join Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Podesta was widely viewed as a key strategist at the White House, keeping the issue at the forefront of Obama’s agenda and steering the release of the proposed rules last year. But it’s McCarthy and the EPA who must draft the regulations to fulfill the policies and implement the For more DETAILS and rules that will require each state to subto REGISTER for the mit a plan to meet their carbon goals. conference and/or any of the events mentioned on “And that’s a tremendous amount of the following pages, go to: work, and she’s a great leader and ace2015.awma.org she’s got a great team working for her,” Podesta told POLITICO before he left the White House. 10 em june 2015
04_EM0615-CS-ACE-Preview-2.indd 10
“I think what has made this effort successful to date, and obviously there’s a ways to go, is that she’s a great listener, and [has] been all over the country talking to stakeholders, from governors to utilities to environmentalists to state regulators, and she incorporates that ability to listen into kind of practical solutions,” he said. White House officials say they are in regular contact with the EPA administrator, although turnover in the West Wing has increased. In addition to Podesta’s departure, acting head of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality Michael Boots is leaving after holding the position for the year since Nancy Sutley left the job. “We’ve got EPA’s back here at the White House,” said Dan Utech, a White House energy and climate adviser. Still, while it was Obama who directed EPA to cut carbon emissions from power plants, EPA is “driving the program in terms of the details,” he added. So far, thirteen states have joined in a lawsuit filed by Ohio coal producer Murray Energy to challenge EPA’s carbon rulemaking in a state-federal battle that’s not unlike the disputes around Obamacare. But there are some crucial differences between the healthcare law and the climate change initiative, which could benefit the EPA in the end. For one, “the Affordable Care Act was a new law,” said Browner, and the Clean Air Act is not. EPA has been implementing the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments for 25 years, and there’s a long list of court decisions that has come to guide the agency, Browner said. In fact, the Supreme Court has already issued several rulings in recent years that support EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, and specifically to do so for power plants. But it won’t be easy to force some states to do what they don’t want to do. EPA has taken over in the past when states balked at its pollution efforts,
Copyright 2015 Air & Waste Management Association
awma.org
5/19/15 3:00 PM
tth h
ANNIVERSARY ANN NNIVER IVERSARY IVER
Portable. Affordable. Reliable. Complete Air Monitoring System The Haz-Scanner™ measures and documents trace level (ppb) gas, particulates & meteorological parameters in real-time to US EPA & EU directives. Confgure up to 12 sensors with true simultaneous PM-2.5 & PM-10 readings.
Custom Sensor Calibrations to Meet Your Needs Build your own system to your specifc a pplication(s).
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but never a program so complicated, and individually tailored to states’ widely-varied situations.
only beginning. And that’s certain to put an even brighter spotlight on McCarthy.
For Obama, who sees addressing the threats of climate change as a legacy issue, McCarthy is his closer. She’s tasked with bringing the federal government’s efforts to curb climate-changing pollution over the finish line, and making sure it lasts into the future.
“You know, I learned a long time ago not to take these things personally,” she said, asserting that she wasn’t surprised by partisan battles. “I’ve been on the Hill a lot and as long as I get treated with respect, I don’t mind differing opinions, and I will always treat everybody else with respect.”
“I think we are now in a plan that’s very mature, and that we are months away from delivering some of the major pieces,” McCarthy said. EPA is due to release a trio of final greenhouse gas regulations—for existing, modified and future power plants—mid-summer. “So I’m incredibly confident.”
And while criticism on the Hill about Obama administration officials can veer into personality complaints, that’s not the case with McCarthy.
But with Republicans in Congress preparing to put EPA and its regulations under the microscope in the coming months, potentially using their control over funding for the agency to fight the rules the political battle over the climate change policy is awma.org
04_EM0615-CS-ACE-Preview-2.indd 11
“I was on a plane recently with half a dozen or so House representatives,” some in leadership, Browner remarked. “And they all without solicitation commented on how much they liked her. I think being liked is important” for dealing with Congress, Browner said. “She’s so down to earth. She’s just very reasonable.”
Copyright 2015 Air & Waste Management Association
june 2015 em 11
5/19/15 3:00 PM
ANNIVERSARY ANN NNIVER IVERSARY IVER
SPOTLIGHT
Sponsored by:
A&WMA’s Keynote Speaker
Gina McCarthy Ballroom BC, Raleigh Convention Center, 4th Floor
This year’s keynote session promises to be something very special, and not to be missed. Featured speaker, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, known for her straight-talking and
by Erica Martinson, politicopro.com
down to earth demeanor, will be joined by an esteemed panel of environmental experts, including Donald R. van der Vaart, Secretary, North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources; Cari P. Boyce, Vice President, Environmental and Energy Policy, Duke Energy (Official 2015 Annual Conference Sponsor); and Vickie Patton, General Counsel, Environmental Defense Fund. Obama’s Climate Change Wonk Gina McCarthy may be at the front line of the bitter climate change battle between President Barack Obama and Republicans, but that’s not how she sees it. As the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), she’s the face of Obama’s plan that will, for the first time in U.S. history, regulate the amount of carbon dioxide released by the nation’s fleet of power plants as part of the strategy to shrink the pollution that scientists blame for global warming. This summer, the EPA will issue its rule forcing each state to design plans to cut their utilities’ carbon emissions—requirements that officials in many coal-dependent states say could threaten their power grids and Republicans warn will destroy the economy, but which advocates say are crucial to begin to slow global warming. “I know that I’m a political appointee, but I feel so strongly that the work that I do is not political,” she told POLITICO during a recent interview from her office. awma.org
04_EM0615-CS-ACE-Preview-2.indd 7
The plan has ignited controversy for bypassing Congress and made her agency a target for Hill Republicans, who contend the Obama administration is pursuing a radical green agenda, and they have vowed to strip the funding for EPA’s efforts. And with this month’s departure of Obama adviser John Podesta—considered by many to be the biggest climate hawk in the White House— the onus falls squarely on McCarthy to bring the transformational regulations across the finish line, a task that will test the 60-year-old cabinet member’s nearly three decades of experience in forging environmental rules. In the meantime, she’s drawn a backlash from more than a dozen states, anger from the entrenched power sector and protests from the Republicans who control Congress—challenges not unlike the ones that former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius faced when rolling out Obamacare, another White House policy that threatened to upend a major slice of the U.S. economy. Nevertheless, even many of her opponents agree that McCarthy is particularly well-suited for the
Copyright 2015 Air & Waste Management Association
Gina McCarthy
Editor’s Note: This article profiling Gina McCarthy first appeared online February 20, 2015, at POLITICOPro.com, a subscription news site, and is reproduced here with permission. june 2015 em 7
5/20/15 8:25 AM
em • annual conference preview
“I’m not somebody who wasn’t in the field before they took a position like this … I make sure that everybody knows it as well as I know it, and I try to know it as well as the level below me knows it.”
job. She’s no wallflower and often pulls laughs out of even the most antagonistic crowds. Her history working for Republican governors like Mitt Romney and her straight-talking demeanor create an easy rapport with some of EPA’s detractors, and her affinity for the details of regulatory policy can keep her grounded in the practical rather than the political issues.
“However, I completely disagree with her and this administration on their climate agenda and will continue to do everything I can to overturn these policies,” the House Energy and Power Subcommittee chairman said.
“I’m not somebody who wasn’t in the field before they took a position like this,” she said. “So I think I’m challenging to work for, because I make sure that everybody knows it as well as I know it, and I try to know it as well as the level below me knows it.”
Other powerful agency opponents include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who made support of coal and attacking the EPA a centerpiece of his reelection campaign in Kentucky last year, as well as Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, who has regularly targeted the agency and has accused it of collaborating with green groups to create overreaching policies.
Obama unveiled his Climate Action Plan in 2013 after telling Congress in his State of the Union address that if lawmakers wouldn’t address climate change, the administration would act on its own. That main component of Obama’s push is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, a set of regulations built off the Clean Air Act that will drive the biggest change in the nation’s power supply since Washington moved to end the utility industry’s dependence on oil in the 1970s. EPA’s regulatory efforts also provide leverage for the administration in its diplomatic efforts to reach an international pact at the Paris climate change summit late this year, showing that the U.S. is willing to take the same type For more DETAILS and of action at home that it’s seeking from to REGISTER for the other nations. conference and/or any of the events mentioned on Opponents have ripped into EPA’s the following pages, go to: plans, warning the power plant regulaace2015.awma.org tions would kill the coal industry, drive electricity prices up and put the power grid at risk of failing as the rules forced
04_EM0615-CS-ACE-Preview-2.indd 8
Still, critics refrain from criticizing McCarthy. She wins praise from even EPA’s staunchest opponents, including lawmakers from coal-heavy states, such as Kentucky Rep. Ed Whitfield, who said he’s got great respect for her.
Unlike Sebelius, the former governor of Kansas who was chased out of her HHS position after the disastrous early rollout of the Affordable Care Act, McCarthy’s policy wonk credentials were earned at state environmental agencies in Connecticut and her home state of Massachusetts before she came to Washington.
— Gina McCarthy
8 em june 2015
power plants offline. They warn that the agency is trying to do too much too fast, and the unintended consequences could be costly and long-lasting.
And Sen. Jim Inhofe, (R-Okla.), who now heads the Environment and Public Works committee, has long butted heads with EPA. He’s accused the agency’s “unelected bureaucrats” of making “unreasonable assumptions” about the state of climate change science. He’s decried the Clean Power Plan, saying recently it would “cost billions; it will increase our energy bills… [and] it still is not going to reduce the CO2 emissions worldwide.” The Senate leaders have made it clear that they intend to go after the EPA in appropriations later in the year. They’ll hold votes trying to repeal the regulations once they are final, and there will be a barrage of bill amendments that aim for the proposals to suffer a death by a thousand cuts. In the House, Rep. Lamar Smith, the Science Committee chairman, has led much of the opposition to EPA, contending the agency hasn’t been open with its scientific data. The final power plant regulations EPA will release this summer will generally leave it up to states to
Copyright 2015 Air & Waste Management Association
awma.org
5/19/15 3:00 PM
tth h
ANNIVERSARY ANN NNIVER IVERSARY IVER
When you’re ready to apply principles of sustainability. You are ready for American Public University. With more than 90 degrees to choose from, there’s almost no end to what you can learn. Pursue a respected Environmental Science degree or certifcate online — at a cost that’s 20% less than the average published in-state rates at public universities.*
Visit StudyatAPU.com/em-mag
BEST ONLINE PROGRAMS
*College Board: Trends in College Pricing, 2013. We want you to make an informed decision about the university that’s right for you. For more about our graduation rates, the median debt of students who completed each program, and other important information, visit www.apus.edu/disclosure.
decide how to meet individual CO2 reduction targets set by the agency. The plans are varied, and some of the proposed targets are likely to change in the final rule. And just this week, McCarthy hinted to utility commissioners that the agency is seriously reconsidering what cuts it will require by 2020. Many states have said EPA is asking for too much, too soon. It’s a complex undertaking, one that requires the agency McCarthy leads to get the technical details just right and avoid any legal mishaps, all while conducting a difficult behind-the-scenes effort to apply political pressure to reluctant state governments. It’s a tall order for the hard-charging McCarthy, whose accent is a quick tip-off that she hails from south Boston. Her husband and three grown children still reside there, as does her dog Emma, and she often breaks out of the Beltway for weekends at home, where she loves bike rides around her Jamaica Plain neighborhood. awma.org
04_EM0615-CS-ACE-Preview-2.indd 9
BACHELOR’S
2015
McCarthy came to EPA during Obama’s first term to head the air office under the previous EPA chief Lisa Jackson before undergoing a grueling confirmation fight to join the cabinet. Prior to that, she worked under then-Gov. Mitt Romney in her native Massachusetts before heading up Connecticut’s environmental agency. “There’s really only once place to get any kind of real experience for running EPA,” and that’s by directing a state environmental agency, said Carol Browner, a Clinton administration EPA Administrator and former Obama climate adviser. McCarthy agrees her background is a major asset in running the agency that’s not only responsible for the carbon rules, but is developing proposals to cut ozone pollution, reduce methane leaks from oil and gas wells and expand EPA’s reach over new waterways and wetlands. She’s steeped in the technical details and legal
Copyright 2015 Air & Waste Management Association
june 2015 em 9
5/19/15 3:00 PM
em • annual conference preview
She sees her role as turning the goals of the Obama administration into a workable policy more than directing her team on how to navigate the precedents of the existing law.
mechanisms of the carbon cutting plan that would require states to lower the emissions from their existing power plants and force any new coalfired power plants to use costly and still largely unproven carbon capture technology. But she sees her role as turning the goals of the Obama administration into a workable policy more than directing her team on how to navigate the precedents of the existing law. “I tend not to read the rule language because I rely on the lawyers to make sure where commas go, but I really like reading the preamble because I think it’s important for us to speak to everyday people about what it means, what the law tells us to do, what the science is that we understand it, and how to apply it, and what that means to them,” McCarthy said. “I think it’s enormously important.” She may be more policy wonk than politician, but McCarthy’s begun playing a more visible public role to try to help sell Obama’s environmental initiatives. In the last month, she’s talked climate change with X Games snow boarders in Aspen, delivered a speech about the threats posed by pollution at a World Health Organization meeting in Geneva and met with Pope Francis’s top advisers at the Vatican.
Complicating her task is the departure of Podesta, who exited the White House this month to join Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Podesta was widely viewed as a key strategist at the White House, keeping the issue at the forefront of Obama’s agenda and steering the release of the proposed rules last year. But it’s McCarthy and the EPA who must draft the regulations to fulfill the policies and implement the For more DETAILS and rules that will require each state to subto REGISTER for the mit a plan to meet their carbon goals. conference and/or any of the events mentioned on “And that’s a tremendous amount of the following pages, go to: work, and she’s a great leader and ace2015.awma.org she’s got a great team working for her,” Podesta told POLITICO before he left the White House. 10 em june 2015
04_EM0615-CS-ACE-Preview-2.indd 10
“I think what has made this effort successful to date, and obviously there’s a ways to go, is that she’s a great listener, and [has] been all over the country talking to stakeholders, from governors to utilities to environmentalists to state regulators, and she incorporates that ability to listen into kind of practical solutions,” he said. White House officials say they are in regular contact with the EPA administrator, although turnover in the West Wing has increased. In addition to Podesta’s departure, acting head of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality Michael Boots is leaving after holding the position for the year since Nancy Sutley left the job. “We’ve got EPA’s back here at the White House,” said Dan Utech, a White House energy and climate adviser. Still, while it was Obama who directed EPA to cut carbon emissions from power plants, EPA is “driving the program in terms of the details,” he added. So far, thirteen states have joined in a lawsuit filed by Ohio coal producer Murray Energy to challenge EPA’s carbon rulemaking in a state-federal battle that’s not unlike the disputes around Obamacare. But there are some crucial differences between the healthcare law and the climate change initiative, which could benefit the EPA in the end. For one, “the Affordable Care Act was a new law,” said Browner, and the Clean Air Act is not. EPA has been implementing the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments for 25 years, and there’s a long list of court decisions that has come to guide the agency, Browner said. In fact, the Supreme Court has already issued several rulings in recent years that support EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, and specifically to do so for power plants. But it won’t be easy to force some states to do what they don’t want to do. EPA has taken over in the past when states balked at its pollution efforts,
Copyright 2015 Air & Waste Management Association
awma.org
5/19/15 3:00 PM
tth h
ANNIVERSARY ANN NNIVER IVERSARY IVER
Portable. Affordable. Reliable. Complete Air Monitoring System The Haz-Scanner™ measures and documents trace level (ppb) gas, particulates & meteorological parameters in real-time to US EPA & EU directives. Confgure up to 12 sensors with true simultaneous PM-2.5 & PM-10 readings.
Custom Sensor Calibrations to Meet Your Needs Build your own system to your specifc a pplication(s).
Wireless Networking Interface multiple systems 24/7 with cell phone alerts & remote global access to data without Cloud-based subscriptions.
Battery, AC, or Solar Option Contact Environmental Devices or our distributor,
SKC inc., for more information. DISTRIBUTED BY
800.234.2589 MADE IN THE USA
HazScanner.com
www.skcinc.com
but never a program so complicated, and individually tailored to states’ widely-varied situations.
only beginning. And that’s certain to put an even brighter spotlight on McCarthy.
For Obama, who sees addressing the threats of climate change as a legacy issue, McCarthy is his closer. She’s tasked with bringing the federal government’s efforts to curb climate-changing pollution over the finish line, and making sure it lasts into the future.
“You know, I learned a long time ago not to take these things personally,” she said, asserting that she wasn’t surprised by partisan battles. “I’ve been on the Hill a lot and as long as I get treated with respect, I don’t mind differing opinions, and I will always treat everybody else with respect.”
“I think we are now in a plan that’s very mature, and that we are months away from delivering some of the major pieces,” McCarthy said. EPA is due to release a trio of final greenhouse gas regulations—for existing, modified and future power plants—mid-summer. “So I’m incredibly confident.”
And while criticism on the Hill about Obama administration officials can veer into personality complaints, that’s not the case with McCarthy.
But with Republicans in Congress preparing to put EPA and its regulations under the microscope in the coming months, potentially using their control over funding for the agency to fight the rules the political battle over the climate change policy is awma.org
04_EM0615-CS-ACE-Preview-2.indd 11
“I was on a plane recently with half a dozen or so House representatives,” some in leadership, Browner remarked. “And they all without solicitation commented on how much they liked her. I think being liked is important” for dealing with Congress, Browner said. “She’s so down to earth. She’s just very reasonable.”
Copyright 2015 Air & Waste Management Association
june 2015 em 11
5/19/15 3:00 PM
