EPA met with hundreds of groups for existing power plant rule

Top Environmental Protection Agency officials have met with at least 210 groups, companies, government agencies and others about its upcoming rule to limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, Bloomberg BNA reported.

The agency held more than 100 meetings with representatives of labor, lawyers, trade groups, government agencies, publicly traded companies and others as it prepared the proposed rule, which it said it would publish in June.

{mosads}Most of the meetings included EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, Acting Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Janet McCabe or Senior Counsel Joe Goffman, the agency told Bloomberg BNA. The records reflected EPA’s efforts up to March 12, about three weeks before the agency sent the rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget for its review.

The topics of the meetings ranged from gathering input about technologies to discussions about the Obama administration’s goals for power plants laid out in its Climate Action Plan.

EPA also reached out with 15 group meetings through its regional offices, the agency said.

Critics of the rule have said EPA did not sufficiently reach out when crafting the rules to areas that would be most affected, such as Kentucky and West Virginia, Bloomberg BNA said.

After publishing the proposal in June, Obama has asked EPA to make the rule final in June 2015 and start to enforce it a year later.