Obama’s EPA Killing Jobs With New Pollution Rule, Coal State Senators Say

More murcury will come from the Obama light bulbs than coal plants…

FILE – This July 27, 2010 file photo shows one of the stacks at the Four Corners Power Plant, operated by Arizona Public Service on tribal land near Fruitland, N.M. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is slated to release rules aimed at reducing mercury pollution from large coal-fired power plants. The new standards factored into a plan by APS to shutter three generators at Four Corners. (AP Photo/Paul Foy, file)

(CNSNews.com) – A coal country Democrat and a conservative Republican are both warning that new pollution rules issued by President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday will kill U.S. jobs and hurt the economy.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has introduced a bill that would create a “fair timeframe” for power plants to comply with the rules. He accused the EPA of ignoring “the devastating impact these regulations will have on jobs and our economy, not only in West Virginia but across this nation.”

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday issued the first national standards to protect American families from power plant emissions of mercury and other toxic emissions such as arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium, and cyanide.

The new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (dubbed the Utility MACT rule) are intended to reduce emissions by relying on “widely available, proven pollution controls” that are already in use at more than half of the nation’s coal-fired power plants, EPA said.