Federal regulators are wrongly pressuring West Virginia environmental officials on air quality and water pollution issues in an effort to "totally remake the American regulatory landscape," state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman says.
Huffman is upset about what he called a "continual parade of new regulatory demands" that are over-burdening state agencies that "are already resource-constrained in carrying out existing mandates."
The concerns are outlined in a letter sent last month to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in anticipation of a committee hearing on Wednesday to examine the relationship between state agencies and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Huffman is among the state officials scheduled to testify at the hearing, which was called by Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., who is a major critic of the Obama administration's EPA.
The letter, which Huffman said was written by a top assistant, Tom Clarke, recounts some well-documented complaints from West Virginia leaders about EPA: new rules to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, delays in review and approval of water quality standard changes, pressure on strip-mine enforcement issues and water pollution guidance aimed at curbing damage from mountaintop removal coal mining.
Huffman's letter said that the EPA's approach undermines what he says is that intent of most federal environmental statutes, under which state officials "serve as the primary regulators" because they "are much closer and more responsive to the local concerns of the people and the environment they protect than the distant bureaucracies in Washington."
"We look forward to better days when the states are freer to carry out the responsibilities with which Congress has entrusted us - to promote a healthy environment for all of our citizens," the letter said.
The letter also raises new issues about EPA's efforts to encourage states to take more care in considering environmental justice, which federal officials define as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin or income in decisions about development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, rules and policies.
Huffman's letter said that, in the years since then-President Clinton issued an environmental justice executive order in 1994, "an entire bureaucracy dedicated" to environmental justice concepts "has grown up within EPA."
It noted that in EPA's new carbon dioxide rules the agency has emphasized "the need for states to make a particular effort, above and beyond that made for the general public, to engage low-income communities and communities of color in the public involvement stage of development of state carbon reduction plans."
Huffman said Tuesday he could not immediately recall other examples of EPA imposing environmental justice mandates on West Virginia in a way that concerned him.
The letter said that the DEP "does not seek to further burden the impoverished and disadvantaged," but is concerned about "EPA's effort to expand the reach of environmental justice requirements to the states.
"First, our state's and our nation's environmental laws protect the health and welfare of the entirety of the public without regard to economic status or race," the letter said.
"Second, there are other laws that are designed to broadly protect against discrimination against the classes of people who are the subject of EPA's [environmental justice effort].
"Third, EPA's bureaucratic approach to [environmental justice] may be workable in the economically and racially stratified communities of the urban areas along with the northeast corridor, but has little value in a state like West Virginia which has historically had one of the nation's highest poverty rates and which is comprised nearly entirely of small towns and rural areas.
"In comparison to the urban areas of the country, the small communities and locales in our state are not nearly so divided along the lines of economic status and race," the letter said.
"In West Virginia, any outreach effort by our agency that effectively reaches the public at large necessarily also reaches the economically disadvantaged and racially diverse, without resort to EPA's [environmental justice] tools."
The letter concluded by saying that DEP did not "want to create the impression that all of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection's interactions with EPA and the federal government are negative.
"Across many of our programs, we have built very good working relationships with our counterparts in EPA's Region 3," the letter said. "Most of the issues with EPA outlined above emanate from EPA headquarters, which has very tightly directed and controlled all programs. Regional offices have had little autonomy to oversee programs as best fits the situations of states in the region. Decisions are made at a distance and without taking local situations into consideration."
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1702 or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.