The South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance (“SCMA”) appreciates the opportunity to provide comments on the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA” or “Agency”) proposal to increase consistency in considering of benefits and costs in future rulemakings under the Clean Air Act (“CAA”). SCMA is an organization that represents more than 400 manufacturing facilities with over 80,000 employees operating and working in South Carolina. Our members appreciate the importance of environmental stewardship and respect the need for necessary and effective regulations to protect our natural resources.
Therefore, SCMA commends the EPA for working to improve the regulatory process to ensure CAA regulations are effective, based on objective science, and take into consideration both the benefits to the environment and the associated costs to manufacturers. By ensuring the EPA’s rulemaking process uses clear and consistent data showing how the EPA develops proposed rules will benefit the environment, economy, public, industry, and all stakeholders. This rule is necessary to improve consistency and transparency in how the EPA assesses risk and estimates benefits and costs.