Posted by Katie Brown Katie_Brown@epw.senate.gov

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Oklahoman Editorial

Oklahoma AG sues to stop EPA's scrubber plan

June 2, 2011

Link to Editorial 

Less than six months after taking office, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is making good on campaign promises to challenge the federal government for legislative and bureaucratic overreach.

An example is the Environmental Protection Agency's rejection of a state mitigation plan regarding the "regional haze" that the EPA claims is adversely affecting federal wildlife refuges. Rather than accepting a plan endorsed by utilities and state environmental officials, the EPA has ordered a harsh and expensive remedy for haze linked to coal-fired power plants.

Rather than bail out of the fight and accept EPA's diktat, Pruitt has sued the agency. Gov. Mary Fallin, a fellow Republican who has a similar anti-federal bureaucracy worldview, praised Pruitt's decision to commit state resources to this battle.

If Pruitt's challenge fails, not only will taxpayers be out the cost of the challenge but electricity consumers - all of us - will be forced to cover the enormous costs ($1 billion plus for OG&E customers alone) of outfitting older coal-fired plants with pollution scrubbers.

The state's plan stressed a gradual conversion of electrical generation to natural gas-fired plants, a cleaner alternative that has the advantage of using gas extracted within the state. The EPA's intransigence means Wyoming coal will continue to make power here.

The anti-business Sierra Club and the EPA care little about the cost to consumers. For them, a billion here and a billion there are worth it to force their narrow agenda on the rest of us.

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