Courtesy, Appalachian News Express
Officials throughout the region this week were hailing the decision of the oft-vilified Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to step down following a four-year term fraught with controversy, particularly in the Central Appalachia coal mining regions.
Jackson announced her decision in a statement on Thursday, saying she will step down after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address next month.
“I will leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction, and ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference,” Jackson said in the statement.
However, in this area, where Jackson has often served as a foil for officials’ anger over regulation on the coal industry, the decision was celebrated, with U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers referring to the announcement as a “late Christmas gift.”
“Under her charge, the war on coal raged as the EPA overstepped Congress year after year, and her refusal to approve mining permits has cost our region thousands of jobs and further disrupted America’s economy,” Rogers said in a statement. “I hope her successor at EPA will understand the importance of coal and preserving our jobs with sensible environmental regulations. It’s time to get our coal miners back to work by embracing domestic energy solutions that will shore up our country’s economy for the long term.”
However, Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, said that while his organization is glad to see Jackson leave, there is still cause for caution.
“It is good to see her stepping down and the hope is that the next administrator of the EPA will be more of a balanced person who understands the connection between the environment and the economy, rather than an anti-coal idealogue like Lisa Jackson,” Bissett said.
Jackson’s actions during her term, Bissett said, represent an attempt by an appointed bureaucrat to legislate and set her own rules, and that’s something the organization hopes will not be true of the next administrator.
“I’m very cautious on any kind of celebration at this time,” Bissett said, pointing out that President Obama’s statement about Jackson’s resignation indicated a great deal of support for the actions she has taken during her tenure. “There have been times in politics where the successor can be even worse — that’s the concern.”
Pike Judge Executive Wayne T. Rutherford also expressed pleasure with Jackson’s resignation.
“Of all former top EPA officials, Lisa Jackson is by far the worst,” Rutherford said in a statement. “She never understood coal and what it means to the livelihood of Pike County and Eastern Kentucky. The Obama Administration’s war on coal only affected Eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia, which is the heart of Central Appalachia.”
Jackson leaves the agency while under scrutiny from a federal lawsuit filed by the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which claims that the administrator used an alias email account under the name “Richard Windsor.” The emails sent from the account, the organization claimed in a statement on Thursday, “relate to the war on coal Jackson was orchestrating on behalf of President Obama outside the appropriate democratic process.”
In a statement issued Thursday, CEI claims that the timing of Jackson’s announcement was not accidental.
“... Her announcement went public just days after the Justice Department agreed — as a result of a lawsuit filed by CEI — to begin producing 12,000 emails from her ‘Richard Windsor’ alias account,” the statement said.
In late July, the agency’s actions on coal permits in Central Appalachia were overturned by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who ruled that the EPA had overstepped its authority granted under the Clean Water Act and Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
The ruling came in a lawsuit which included several parties, including the state of Kentucky, City of Pikeville and Kentucky Coal Association, against the EPA related to the agency’s denial of surface mine permits already approved by state regulators. The EPA has appealed the decision.
The Associated Press reported that environmental groups were praising Jackson in the wake of the announcement.
“There has been no fiercer champion of our health and our environment than Lisa Jackson, and every American is better off today than when she took office nearly four years ago,” said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, according to the AP.
Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Senate’s subcommittee on clean air, told the AP that Jackson’s tenure was a “breath of fresh air” and he credited her for setting historic fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, and for finalizing clean air standards.
Bissett said Friday there are no indicators as to who Jackson’s replacement will be, but whoever is the appointee, he said, will indicate to the industry what kind of regulation it can expect in the next four years.
“Who this person is, what their background is, whether they understand the process of mining coal, will all be good indicators of where the EPA goes from here,” he said.