areas are peaks that have been permitted or proposed and the people live in the low-lying valleys, when you blow off the mountains, basically what happens is the people in the valley get flooded and fema then comes in and helps to clean up the flooded communities. and it -- there's many reasons to not allow this permit. this watershed, the spruce river watershed has an astronomical of mining in it already and it's heavily impacted those communities. these jobs will never benefit the community of blair. the community of blair will be depopulated because of the spruce mine jobs. >> thank you, miss gunno. mr. eisenberg, we heard that this has some effect on the people locally, miss gunno

talked about it, and talked about the need for this coal. let me ask, do we know what happens to the coal of logan county? how much of that coal is sent to other countries? >> i do not know the answer. >> well, i can help you. a third. so a question we have to ask ourselves is what are we doing what are we doing to ourselves? mr. herbert -- do we want a country that -- and you described the country that you were asking whether, you know, whether we would want to live in. yes, you're getting right at the heart of this question. do we want a country that is

despoiled and contaminated so that we can send the coal to china and to india, and yes, to venezuela. there's not much time, but miss gunno, let me ask you quickly, if you think it sounds that the epa should be using new science as it comes forward to make the best decisions for protecting the streams? ? absolutely they should be, and i need to say that the citizens from southern appalachia has the protects and lives, and the epa is doing what they need to do to protect the lives of citizens in

our communities. >> okay, thank you. >> representative from pennsylvania. >> thank you, chairman. i am very disappointed in the obama administration. even with notice, refusing to come. i happen to believe that we live in a constitutional republic. this is not a dictatorship. congress, the legislative body has an oversight function that has checks and balances and to blatantly refuse raises the question, what are they hiding? senator kirkendall, what would the potential be for the states to expend resources and at this time the economies are not good for the federal government or states and to expend resources permitting mines contemplated by section 404 permits that were then after the fact essentially vetoed by the epa. >> what would be -- i'm sorry. by the impact on the states contemplating permitting.

>> i can tell you the economic impact. the jobs, number one, but number two, i worked 11 years under ground, so i'm not a novice to the coal industry. i can remember back when i worked, when i was getting ready to go to college and we worked and we were called redhats back then and jobs were tough to get, but we got some, but nowadays, it takes $2 million to $3 million to qualify a permit and to get companies to come in now and put a permit together and spend $2 million to $3 million not knowing if it's approved that if it can still be pooled. if you approve something you approve it. there'sa i rule and law that we all have to abide by and as mr. holt said, these people had better things to do. i think they should have been

here. we're talking about people's lives, income and everything else and that's the reason i'm here is because i care about people having the ability to weak up on monday morning as an american and have a job. our kid, the next generation is not going to be working and you see the bottom of the appalachian power bill that says you can volunteer money, if we don't use domestic energy inside this country, your electric bill is you won't pay an energy tax in the next few years and it will be mandatory and they were making conversation about shipping the coal to foreign countries and that's exactly right. we should be using our own coal, our own steel, our own workers and we should be operating inside of america and that's what the people in this country need, want and they think we ought to have while we export coal because of the rules and regulations that we have. you know, if we had the right setup we'd be retrofitting the

power plants and making them environmentally sound and we're missing the boat on every opportunity and that's why we have the hearings this morning. i don't want the waters to run to where they're not doable and usable. we're not talking about streams. come to southern appalachia and i want you to see the streams we're talking about. they're dry ditches. they only have water when it rains. all these miles of streams are not streams. on 28-degree slopes how many streams can you have on a mountain? the water will seek its lowest level. let's be honest about things that are sensible. quit listening to the rhetoric and come yourself and look and i'll take you on a tour of post-mine land before and after. i'll talk to you about the good and the bad. yes, we can do things better and we sit up here and people's lives are in jeopardy because

we're having a committee discussion and send the people down to these regions and you're talking about multimillion and billions of dollars and lives and the daily living of american people that are sitting waiting on what a committee takes data. come see for yourself. you'll find out. we can do it both ways, gentlemen,ladies and let's be americans and do it in america. >> just one follow-up question because i don't have much time left. what impact has it in in your region. >> come logan, we've had massive layoffs and numerous mines in boon conte. my county has not had as many because we have a deep mine that employs a lot of people. the mine which is actually the owner of said properties in question for the surface mine, but it's getting where when you talk to people and the ceos of these companies, they're ready to start going to illinois and

wyoming and other places where they can get permits and mine and they're going to leave the appalachian region. so it's a question now, do young people buy homes and spend money, take a chance on making a living in an area so volatile that permits are being pulled? if you can pull this permit, you can pull any permit that the epa that has a jurisdiction. are we going to get to that point? >> thank you, sir. thank you, chairman. >> in september, this last september, this subcommittee did go to charleston and had a field hearing on stream quality issues. >> that's correct. >> and the acting governor, now governor was there. u.s. senator manchin was there, other bewitnesses including mis gunno testified and that was a very good hearing and we did see mine reclaimation and a --

>> did you see the golf course? >>. >> we didn't see the golf course. i would like to recognize the representative of massachusetts. >> the reason coal has been on a massive decline in recent years has less to do with president obama than with the inability of the coal industry to innovate and its inability to compete. there are more than 500 coal-fired power generation units operating in this country, 500. how many of those are more than 50 years old? more than 200 of them are more than 50 years old. how many are at least 60 years old of that 500? 74. we actually have ten coal units that are at least 70 years old. here's a picture of the perry kay power plant in indianapolis

built in 1925. it's an 87-year-old coal-fired power plant. thomas edison was alive when this plant was built. the television had just been invented. air travel was in itsen fancy. the first transatlantic flight was two years away when this plant was built and still operating today. we've improved on all of the other technologies and we figured out how to do the sammy thing, but for less money all with greater speed and with reliability. it's the american way. new replaces old, efficient replaces wasteful, clean replaces dirty. high-tech replaces low-tech and our country benefits when this happens. the 87-year-old perry kay power plant is switching to natural gas beginning in 2014. this is a growing trend in the power sector.

natural gas is cheaper. it burns cleaner. you are less likely to get asthma or have a baby with birth defects and if you live near a plant that burns it, you're feeling better about the health of your own children because you know that there are more dangerous elements coming out of coal than out of natural gas and you can get natural gas without blowing the tops off of mountains and detroying the environment. so right now 36% of america's electricity is currently generated by coal. 36% today. first three months of 2012. six years ago, coal was producing half of america's electricity. so it's gone in six years from 50% down to 36% of electricity. at the same time, electricity from natural gas has grown from

18% of u.s. generation to 27%. wind has gone from producing none of our power to 3% of our power in the last six years. newer, cheaper, cleaner technologies are beating coal. the free market is beating coal. adam smith is spinning in his grave as we're listening to the republicans talk about the node to prop up the coal industry against competing technologies like natural gas, like wind. as a matter of fact, he's spinning so fast in his grave that he would qualify as a new energy source that's how much energy he's giving off listening about the rise of natural gas and wind as competition to coal especially with these plants that are 50, 60, 70, 87 years old. now here's the interesting

thing. in the waxman-markey bill that the house of representatives passed in 2009 we built in $60, and between now and 2030. for them to be able to install carbon capture andy is quest raigz technology. the electric utility industry, they supported it, but and the coal industry said no. that's's lot of money and a lot of investment in you in technology that the democrats built into their legislation so that they could innovate and so that they can improve and become more competitive with the natural gas industry. the coal industry said no. no. we're not going to move and

that's $60 billion of funding and $200 million. they said no. they said no. they said no over and over and over again to innovation. there are now 200 coal plants over the age of 50 that need to be renovated at the cost of billions of dollars. natural gas is cheaper. wind is on the move. who wants to pay now in the private sector to rehabilitate dinosaur coal units with leaner, cheaper options available? now the free market says if the coal industry did not want that funding then we look at the costs and we just say we're moving the natural gas and we're moving to wind. you innovate or you die. just ask the auto industry. that's what's happening to the coal industry. they refuse to innovate. they refuse to even accept the funding that would have made it possible for them to innovate. i just hope that the record is clear out there and that this gets reported as the real story

that the coal industry refused to move to help their own people to be able to compete in this marketplace. i yield back the balance of my time. >> i'm glad to hear you don't like old coal plants. let's work on getting new ones out there. okay. i'd like to recognize the gentleman from michigan. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i represent the first district. we have a lot of minerals in our district, nickel, copper, iron, gold, and i would like to ask, mr. eisenberg, and tell me this regulation that the permit was going to be revoked and what's going to do with the rest of the harvesting and with the

resurgence and and you're talking about the pebble case up in alaska. that's an interesting case ski urge the come the toe look at that a little bit closer. the epa is using the exact same part of section 404, 404c and in the spruce mine case and the term in 404c can change the specification whenever. now they can't because the spruce mine decision means you can't do it retroactively and they cannot take the decision that they can do it preemptively before it is commenced and before anything and that has a lot of folks very, very worried about it. a lot of the same companies and the same industries that were impacted by the spruce mine decision. right now epa has not done this. they are performing a watershed assessment, but they seem increasingly likely to do it at

the conclusion of this assessment. i noted in my testimony that environmental groups have started asking for watershed assessment similar to that of the great lakes region. >> it's the same thing as what happened in the spruce mine. if you take away the specification on the way to fill then you can't do it. you're essentially, and epa admitted it, you're essentially vetoing the project which is the responsibility of the army corps. so it could have wide ranging application and i certainly am committed to look at it. >> do you think we'll need less copper, nickel, iron in the next 20 years in this country. speaking on behalf of them, absolutely not. we'll need more of it. >> do you think we harvest our minerals in this country at a higher standard than they are harvested around the world such as the environmental impact of the global environment? >> i am certain that we do. >> it just seems to me that keeping the jobs here in america

and the veteran environmental quality is our goal here in this country. i think we should be, you know, harvesting our materials here at home in a better fashion than occurs in china or some of the other mines. miss harbert, do you have any comment on that analysis that you think is true? >> if you look at the world's appetite for energy and the economic growth we hope that we will see around the world that there is no doubt we'll need more minerals and more inputs and more infrastructure and we have to decide whether we'll be complacent and import those things or whether we'll cultivate our own resources and have a comparative advantage. we have a lot of resources in this country and those resources in the technology to take those resources to market advances every year. we have the opportunity to use coal, use oil and use gas

including wind and renewables effectively in our country, but the epa is standing in the way. i'd like to address the comment about natural gas. it launched a coal campaign and they've been successful and now they've launched it beyond gas campaign, it is completely against american resources and we have to figure out who is complicit in that and we can't let the regulatory overreach of standing in the way of getting our economy back on its feet. in order to harvest solar energy and wind energy we'll need minerals, it seems to me. >> they're seeking the rights to the minh rals all around the world. >> do we have what's needed to harvest the minerals in this country. >> we certainly have a great deal of minh rals. as you referenced in your district you have a great deal of them and we have a policy to

access the minerals and if we want a vibrant, domestic economy which all of those inputs are needed for all source of energy, we'll need to be able to have a regulatory regime in place thate to allow access to the resources. >> thank you very much. i yield back the remainder of my time. >> the gentlemen yields back. i think it's my turn. i'm going to yield myself the question. i'm sure we were all entertained by the political theater of our ranking member and his comments. it's shocking to me to hear comments about the coal industries and his ability to innovate and compete. i don't know how we could think the coal industry can innovate and compete when up against the massive burden and costly burden of activist regulatory agencies

like the epa and the department of the interior. i would remind this committee and the ranking member that those old coal-fired power plants you were talking about provide about 45% to 50% of america's energy needs today. in the state of ohio they provide 87% of the energy. thousands and thousands of jobs are across the country. i'm glad that the chairman hosted this important hearing today on the obama administration's use of executive power. especially in the case of the coal mine and the broader effects that the abuse of power can have on the whole. the obama administration is most clearly exemption fized in the spruce coal mine case and that's the reason for this hearing. however as they have testified today, the actions taken by the

epa to veto a valid permit by the u.s. army corps of nrnengin is crippling effects if it is allowed to stand. america's businesses are being crushed by the uncertainty of regulations from obama care and other epa and interior regulations and if the epa had the power to veto permits justly issued by other federal agencies, companies could start to move investments overseas where they have the certainty and finality they need to invest their money. in your testimony, you cite a study that said over $200 billion are contingent on section 404 permits. when epa asserted the right to withdraw the specification of a disposal site for a permit after issuance by the u.s. army core of engineers, the district judge

amy perman jackson who was appointed to the bench by president obama asked the epa what are the permittees supposed to do tomorrow? specifically under epa's reasoning, she asked, so? everyone with a permit has to on a daily basis compare their permit to your list of specified sites. they can't do what they have been permitted to do by the united states? so my question to you is, what would the practical effect be on the company having their section 404 permits be subject to epa's ever changing list of acceptable disposal sites? >> i used to be an infrastructure project developer. you look at all of your risks. technological risks. sovereign risk, political risk. what this introduces into the mix is a whole other level of risk that you have to find a way over. a hurdle. what does it do? it causes you to cancel the

project because it's too high or increase the cost of the infrastructure because you have to take that into account or you take that money and go elsewhere. all of those things make it impractical and a very impactful impact on american infrastructure. we have a crumbling infrastructure and we need a lot of investment. those people who make those investments see those at risk. it has a very real practical timely impact. >> okay. mr. eisenberg, you talked about a hurdle cost that companies have to account for in their planning of projects if this action is allowed to stand. would many of the members of the national association of manufacturing have this same hurdle cost in markets overseas? >> in overseas? probably not. this is a case of did you plikative regulation.

they don't have the authority to do this. the has the authority to modify the permit. they tried to fix the thing they could which is where you drop it. it introduces the regulation and distort this is hurdle rate which is the calculation that an investor makes to decide whether or not to invest in a project. certainly not. it gets to the core of my testimony really which is if epa wants more authority, they need to come here and try to get it. if they don't feel comfortable with the bounds of their authority, congress is the place they need to go to get more. >>. >> thank you. my time expired so i will yield to my colleague from massachusetts. do you have additional questions? >> i do. it's only to make the point again. for the first three months of 2012, coal only produced 36% of the electricity in the country. that's my point. it's declining rapidly because

of natural gas and because of wind. just in the last five years, just so we get the numbers right in terms of this trend, there were 16,000 new mega watts of coal installed in the united states. there were 36,000 new mega watts of wind installed in the united states and 41,000 new mega watts of natural gas installed in the united states. to put it another way over the last years, 17% of the new generation came from coal. 39% came from wind and 44% came from natural gas in the last five years. that trend is clear. so you might want to keep looking in the rear view mirror at numbers from ten years ago or 20 years ago, but it's down to 10%. the market moved clearly to wind and natural gas. wind is competitive with new coal. it has a generating source.

these are numbers that basically again go to free market decisions made by utility executives across the united states of america in terms of where the new electricity is being generated from. these are just numbers that i know people want to blame obama for the free market moving against technology which is not competitive. i just think it's unfair and inaccurate and i yield to the gentlemen from new jersey. >> i thank the gentlemen for his statement. he describes very well that market conditions are changing. we want the coal companies to innovate. we don't wish the miners ill by any means. but if they refuse to innovate, they are going to be left behind. the chairman and the ranking

member has made that point clearly. we have an ongoing obligation to look after the environment. what is not changing is that obligation that we have to provide oversight to see that the environmental protection agencies and the environmental protection laws of this country are working. that's what this is about. i thank the gentlemen for yielding. >> again, i thank the gentlemen very much. this is not unlike the auto industry. they fought a generation. the fuel economy standards just kept getting more and more uncompetitive with the rest of the planet until it reached a point where the product was not selling. they neerd bankruptcy.

it required a federal government in order to ensure they did not go under. that was not anything that i wanted to vote for. i'm one of the few people who can say i voted twice to bail out chrysler. 1979 and in 2010. we were offering the same opportunity in the coal industry. we were staying we will provide the funding for the innovation. we will provide the coal and give you a bridge to make the transition to stay within the framework of new energy sources within the country. the coal industry in the same way that the auto industry did said absolutely no. where is the auto industry today? they have come through the mess and now they are embracing the goal of 54.5