During a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) spoke about the Biden-era Clean Power Plant rule.
00:03Senator Curtis, are you ready to go or should I go to Senator Houston?
00:06No, we are ready to go.
00:07Okay.
00:10Mr. Zeldin, administrator, thank you for being here today.
00:13It's great to be with you.
00:16Utahns are already in tune with your approach of smart and practical.
00:20Let's be clean.
00:21Let's do it right, but be thoughtful as well.
00:24So thank you for that.
00:25Thank you for your visit to Utah.
00:26For Utah, I'd be remiss if I didn't highlight Utah's kind of unique ozone situation and your team's grasp of our unique geography.
00:35Thank you for that and for understanding that.
00:38I'd highlight, too, that Utahns are very committed to cleaner air and cleaner water and have spent no small amount of effort to do so, but we're trapped in by some of these geographic things.
00:50So thank you for that.
00:51I'd also like to recognize the critical uses with your work on PFAS and your recent announcement concerning a comprehensive approach to managing PFAS.
01:06Thank you for that.
01:08Last April, the Biden EPA finalized the National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for certain PFAS chemistries.
01:13These rules set standards at a level for PFAS that will be extremely challenging for compliance.
01:20I've also been told that the science used to develop these standards, known as maximum containment level, has been scrutinized.
01:26Can you give me and my water utilities back in Utah a sense for the best way to work with you to be clean, to do what people expect us to do, but also comply with the best science?
01:38I will say that over the course of these last few months, there's been a lot of outreach to EPA from individuals and companies that are very heavily leaning into trying to innovate and find more efficient ways to be able to treat contamination from PFAS,
02:02which will allow drinking water systems, hopefully, to be able to remediate these concerns more efficiently than projections were in the past.
02:12That's going to be a big deal for them.
02:14For PFOA and PFOS, those are two chemical forms of PFAS where the research and data seem to be most advanced.
02:23That's where the MCL was set at four parts per trillion.
02:28It's going to stay that way.
02:30We heard from drinking water systems, actually primarily from members of this committee as I was going through the confirmation process,
02:37where drinking water systems were concerned about their ability to be able to come up with the funds, to come into compliance by the date set by that regulation.
02:48We want to work with them to be able to hit those target goals, and hopefully these new innovations that are continuing to come in line will allow them to do that at less cost.
03:03I know that a lot of my colleagues have and probably will continue to talk about the pace at which EPA approves new chemicals.
03:10Your predecessors have really struggled with that.
03:12It's a problem because many of these new chemicals could replace these previous chemicals that we know to be poor, and yet we can't get them approved.
03:21So thanks for your continued work on that as well.
03:25I want to touch on TASCA improvements.
03:28Ensuring a well-functioning TASCA program is not only important for protecting human health and the environment, but also for other pillars, including energy dominance and manufacturing and AI.
03:38Chemical regulations must be based on sound silence.
03:41They must also recognize the critical uses for these chemicals so we don't disrupt key supply chains and hurt Americans.
03:48What can we do to ensure that the TASCA risk evaluations are truly risk-based and based on assumptions that how chemicals are used in the real world and not theoretical?
04:00It's very important to consider the signs, to use best available signs, to have the bandwidth inside the office to get through the backlog, which we have been improving, to improve the technology with inside of that office, which we have been able to do.
04:18Congress added an anomaly to a recent congressional funding bill that gave $17 million towards speeding up this effort to allow us to get through this backlog, which is a massive backlog with both new chemicals and in the pesticide review.
04:35As you know, as you know, I've been vocal about the role of natural gas in ensuring America has access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy.
04:45The clean power plant rule has hurt building out new energy generation to meet the incredible growth demand.
04:51Can you speak to how the Biden-era rule harms this goal and how we have to keep focused on affordable, reliable, clean?
04:58We announced on March 12th a lot of different regulations that we are reconsidering.
05:05I'm not going to prejudge the outcome of the rulemakings.
05:09There will be public comment periods involved.
05:12We'll follow our obligations under the law.
05:14We'll follow the Administrative Procedures Act.
05:16And we will make sure that we're heeding calls from you, Senator, which have been important in your efforts to fight for Utah.
05:25It was great to be on the ground in Utah a few weeks back and to be part of meetings that you led, bringing key officials and community leaders together.
05:36I look forward to doing it again.
05:38I'm out of time, but I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you on behalf of them for that visit and for that cooperation.
