Michael Shea, HEAL Utah, 801.706.1885, michael@healutah.org
SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz and Sen. Mike Lee on Monday announced that they would use an extreme and obscure legislative maneuver called the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overrule common sense clean air protections for Utah national parks. Chaffetz began by introducing legislation in the House to repeal the Regional Haze Rule for Utah.
Over 45,000 people – including 100 impacted business owners – from across the region, concerned about national parks from Zion to the Grand Canyon, wrote to EPA in support of its plan for protecting clean air and outdoor recreation economies in some of Utah’s most beautiful places.
"Just as Jason Chaffetz is woefully distant from low-income Utahns who struggle to afford healthcare, he is also out of touch with our families' desire for clean air and pristine national parks," says Matt Pacenza, HEAL Utah's executive director. "After years of careful analysis, the EPA rightfully concluded that limiting pollution from coal-burning is a necessary step toward protecting our families' health and our scenic vistas. It's appalling to see how quickly Utah's Congressional delegation will undo years of scientific study to protect a monopoly utility's profits."
The CRA has been used only once in U.S. history prior to the current presidential administration, and would require the decades-long rulemaking process around curtailing regional haze to begin anew from scratch. The Utah Regional Haze Rule would have required Rocky Mountain Power, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s PacifiCorp utility company, to install pollution controls on its Hunter and Huntington coal plants in Utah, protecting human health and clean air in regional national parks.
“Two anti-public lands extremists have proposed that Congress take the most radical action possible to lock in decades of polluted skies in Utah, all to protect Rocky Mountain Power’s failing coal plants,” said Lindsay Beebe, organizing representative for the Utah Sierra Club. “Chaffetz and Lee aren’t concerned about our health. They’re tying up Congress with a giveaway to a monopoly utility when they should be busy coming up with a healthcare solution. These are the very same Republican leaders who are fighting to sell off our sacred public lands to the highest bidder, doubling down on the extremist anti-public-lands agenda that already drove the outdoor Retailer show right out of the state.”