July 24, 2024 - West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to issue an emergency stay preventing implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant rules.

The petition to the high court comes just days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected a request to block the rules. The request was brought by West Virginia and a coalition of other states.

“Our position remains the same: This rule strips the states of important discretion while using technologies that don’t work in the real world,” Morrisey said in a press release.

The EPA’s rules ignored the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in West Virginia v. EPA, Morrisey said.

“The landmark West Virginia v. EPA is clear that Congress placed real limits on what the EPA can do, and we will ensure those limits are upheld,” he said.

At the beginning of June, U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., was joined by 43 Senate colleagues in introducing a formal challenge to the EPA rules through the Congressional Review Act.

“With this Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval, every member of Congress will have the opportunity to protect America’s energy future, heed the warnings of our nation’s electric grid operators and adhere to the precedent set by the Supreme Court,” Capito said.

Numerous West Virginia officials and stakeholders in the state’s energy industries have vowed to fight the power plant rules.

Chris Hamilton, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, has said the rules are “specifically designed” to force the state’s nine coal-fired power plants to close.

“What EPA is doing is economic suicide,” he said. “West Virginians will lose jobs. Americans will continue to pay increasingly more expensive power bills. Our state and national electric systems will become even more unreliable as the grid weakens and baseload power supplies are severely reduced. And just as West Virginia will likely import its future energy, America’s energy security will become more dependent on foreign countries and potentially foreign adversaries.”

Shortly after the EPA released the final rules package in May, Gov. Jim Justice held an event at Independence Hall in Wheeling, where he was joined by a group of coal miners.

“The EPA and White House’s tone is clear: West Virginia doesn’t matter,” Justice said. “We are being told to close our facilities and send workers home without considering the economic impact. All West Virginians need to support our miners right now.”

The EPA says the power plant rules are intended “to protect all communities from pollution and improve public health without disrupting the delivery of reliable electricity.”

The suite of final rules includes:

- A final rule for existing coal-fired and new natural-gas-fired power plants that would ensure all coal-fired plants that plan to operate in the long-term and all new baseload gas-fired plants control 90% of their carbon pollution.

- A final rule that would strengthen and update the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for coal-fired power plants, tightening the emissions standard for toxic metals by 67% and finalizing a 70% reduction in the emissions standard for mercury from existing lignite-fired sources.

- A final rule that would reduce pollutants discharged through wastewater from coal-fired power plants by more than 660 million pounds per year, ensuring cleaner water for affected communities, including communities with environmental justice concerns that are disproportionately impacted.

- A final rule that would require the safe management of coal ash that is placed in areas which were unregulated at the federal level until now, including at previously used disposal areas that may leak and contaminate groundwater.