Murray Energy Sues EPA Over New Carbon Rule
By Joanna M. Foster  on June 19, 2014 at 9:28 am
Ohio-based Murray Energy, the nation’s largest privately owned coal company, has made good on its threat to sue over the EPA’s proposed new carbon emission rule.
On Wednesday, as the rule was being published in the Federal Register, the lawsuit against the EPA was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The suit requests that the Court issue a writ to prevent the EPA from implementing the “disastrous” carbon-cutting rule.
“This is clearly an illegal attempt by the Obama EPA to impose irrational and destructive cap-and-tax mandates, which Congress and the American people have consistently rejected,” Gary M. Broadbent, assistant general counsel and media director for Murray Energy, said in a statement. “These proposed rules will cause immediate and irreparable harm to Americans, including our citizens on fixed incomes and our manufacturers of products that compete in the global marketplace.”
Time and time again, national polls have demonstrated that the vast majority of Americans, including those from heavily-coal dependent states, approve of the EPA’s rule to reduce carbon emissions, even if it means an increase in the price of electricity.
Murray Energy employs 7,200 people and operates 13 active coal mines in six states.
“The Obama EPA has waged an all-out War on Coal, promulgating a series of rules and regulations seeking to eliminate the United States coal industry, and the very good jobs, and low cost electricity, which it provides,” the release said. “Indeed, the lives and livelihoods of entire families in many regions of America are being destroyed.”
Last month, Murray Energy Corp. founder Robert Murray made clear his intention to sue the EPA over the rules in an interview with WV Executive, where he claimed that the EPA has been lying about the existence of global warming, and that the earth is actually getting colder, despite a plethora of scientific studies which document the warming trend around the world.
Murray Energy also filed suit against the EPA in March, after the agency published a long overdue update of air quality standards for coal mines, intended to help reduce the health impacts of mining such as black lung disease. Murray claimed the new rules to safeguard workers’ health were part of the administration’s so-called “war on coal” and that the rules would devastate jobs in the coal industry.
The company followed that lawsuit with an announcement that it was cutting promised health benefits to one-thousand ex-coal miners.
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