Key House panel chairman claims EPA encourages lawsuits to avoid normal rulemaking process

The chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment charged Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency is colluding with environmental groups to avoid the usual process for adopting regulations. Rep. Ed Whitfield of Kentucky's 1st District, left, said "We have reason to believe" that EPA encourages lawsuits against some aspect of a proposed rule, then settles with the plaitiffs and pays their legal fees.

"It is a path devoid of both messy public comment periods and political accusations over whether EPA is moving unilaterally," John McCardle of Greenwire writes for The New York Times. "Whitfield's charges aren't exactly new," he notes, but writes that the hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee "was one of the most public -- and vociferous -- airings of the theory in many months."

Environmental groups said Whitfield was off base, but the congressman, whose district includes most of the Tennessee Valley Authority's service area in Kentucky, said another version of the technique probably played a role in TVA's settlement with environmental groups over the federal utility's alleged air-pollution violations. "EPA had to sign off on the April settlement," Greenwire notes. (Read more)