Increased regulation of water and air pollutants could spur the creation of new industries aimed at reducing them, and thus boost the economy and job creation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said in New Orleans on Friday. "Smart environmental protection can actually drive innovation," Jackson told the crowd at the 15th annual Tulane Law School Summit on...
Increased regulation of water and air pollutants could spur the creation of new industries aimed at reducing them, and thus boost the economy and job creation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said in New Orleans on Friday.
"Smart environmental protection can actually drive innovation," Jackson told the crowd at the 15th annual Tulane Law School Summit on Environmental Law & Policy. "The fact that we insist on clean water creates a market.
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson"My issuing a new rule, a new regulation, results in lots of pages published in the Federal Register. But as a business, those regulations might be a business opportunity," she said. "We have an insatiable desire for clean water, so we're insistent that everybody here should have clean water. That creates a market for a whole line of products that get us clean water."
She said the same holds true for clean energy.
"And the country that decides to take the lead on clean energy will take the lead on those jobs," she said. "It's my personal belief that China has realized that. They recognize it's in their best interest to corner that market" of clean energy technology.
In an interview after her talk, Jackson said that the Obama administration is supportive of efforts by Louisiana to entice new manufacturing facilities to the state, including the pig-iron manufacturing plant proposed by steel giant Nucor Corporation in St. James Parish.
But she said Nucor and other companies that are likely to produce large amounts of greenhouse gases should design their new facilities with the assumption that Congress and the EPA will eventually regulate their emissions.
"When they design and build these new facilities, they should think about a future with greenhouse gases regulated," she said.
Nucor officials briefed St. James Parish residents on their plans for the project on Thursday night. The proposed plant will be the subject of a state Department of Environmental Quality public hearing on its permit for air releases on Thursday. The hearing begins at 6 p.m. at the St. James Parish Courthouse, Courtroom A, 5800 Louisiana 44, in Convent.
The plant is expected to produce 25,000 tons a year of carbon dioxide, a gas linked to global warming.
Late last year, the EPA declared greenhouse gases were a threat to human health, a decision that has been challenged in court by Louisiana, Virginia and a number of other states.
The declaration is the first step towards the adoption of a series of EPA rules that would regulate greenhouse gases, including carbon. Companies will have to submit annual reports on greenhouse emissions by March 31, 2011, and the agency has indicated it might require new or modified plants that emit more than 29,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year to get permits confirming they're using best available technologies to reduce emissions.
Louisiana and other states have objected to those rule changes, too.
Obama has been waiting for a more comprehensive plan for capping and trading greenhouse gas emissions to make its way through Congress, but several alternative bills have stalled.
In February, Jindal said that during a meeting of governors with Obama at the White House, he brought up his concerns that the uncertainty about the new EPA rules and the proposed cap and trade legislation could scare off Nucor.
"They've bought land in St. James Parish," Jindal said after the meeting. "They said it's either going to be St. James Parish, Louisiana, or it's going to be Brazil. You're talking about 1,250 jobs over three phases, average pay $75,000, $2 (billion) to $4 billion private capital investment, one of the largest investments in our history from the private sector at one time, and they've said one of their top two or three concerns is what might happen up in D.C., about what the EPA might do, what might happen with cap-and-trade."
The law summit, titled "Bound by Water," continues through Sunday at Tulane Law School, 6329 Freret St., New Orleans.
Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3327.