Elliott Negin is the director of news and commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Robert E. “Bob” Murray, the pugnacious owner of Ohio-based coal giant Murray Energy Corp., keeps his lawyers busy. Besides appealing safety fines, over the past few years his company has sued two news organizations — the Charleston Gazette and Huffington Post — for defamation and the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration for levying “unfounded and baseless violation citations.”
More recently, the company turned it up a notch, announcing it will sic its lawyers on the Environmental Protection Agency. Why? The company — the largest producer of underground coal in the country — alleges that the agency has illegally ignored the impact of Clean Air Act enforcement on jobs in the coal industry.
“Over the past five years, EPA has waged what can fairly be described as a war on coal, repeatedly and consistently encouraging sources to switch from coal to other fuels, to shut down coal-fired sources, and to avoid constructing new coal-fired sources, all through EPA’s administration and enforcement of the Clean Air Act,” the company’s law firm, Squire Sanders, stated in a January 21 “notice of intent” letter, which plaintiffs are required to file in advance of suing a federal agency. “You have a nondiscretionary duty under [Clean Air Act section 321 (a)] to continuously evaluate the employment effects of these actions but have failed to do so.”
Murray has been lambasting the Obama administration for years on this point. His most recent tirade came at a state-sponsored West Virginia energy conference in Charleston on December 17.
“There is no question that the United States coal industry is being destroyed by the actions of President Barack H. Obama and his radical followers and his supporters,” he told the crowd. Murray did acknowledge that coal’s decline is at least partly due to cheap natural gas, but he insisted that the president is making good on a campaign promise to crush the industry, putting miners out of work and depriving Americans of low-cost electricity.
“Mr. Obama’s actions [are] a human issue to me…,” he continued. “I know the names of those Americans whose jobs and family livelihoods are being destroyed as he appeases his radical environmentalist, unionist, liberal elitist, Hollywood character, and other constituencies that got him elected.”
Coal’s War on Us
Rhetoric aside, does Murray Energy have a legitimate beef with the EPA? The short answer is no.
“The threatened lawsuit lacks any merit because the Clean Air Act here does not give private parties the right to challenge health safeguards after the fact or compel the sought-after action by the EPA,” explained John Walke, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who has worked on air pollution issues for more than 20 years. “The law never has been read to support the strained interpretation underlying Murray Energy’s fanciful letter. Any court should dismiss this type of lawsuit quickly.”
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