Yesterday, 239 public interest and environmental groups (that’s two full pages of organization names…single spaced!) including OMB Watch wrote to President Obama to ask him to move forward with plans to regulate coal ash. A draft proposed rule, developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, has been under review at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) since Oct. 16, 2009. From the letter:

Continued delay in the issuance of federal regulations for the disposal of the 136 million tons of toxic coal combustion waste generated annually is dangerous and unacceptable. Unmitigated harm, often to poor and minority communities, continues to threaten the lives and environment of millions of Americans. Communities near America’s thousands of coal ash dumps are threatened with poisoned drinking water, polluted waterways, and life-threatening failures of decades-old dams. The failure to act makes another catastrophic failure, like the disaster in Kingston, ever more likely, and it makes the poisoning of additional water sources a near certainty.

Releasing the draft rule would trigger the public process of rulemaking, thereby ensuring a fair and open process in which all stakeholders have an equal opportunity to address the complexities of the proposed rule. Until the draft rule is released for public comment, the debate occurs almost entirely behind closed doors. 

Six months is more than enough time for OIRA to complete a review. According to its own policy, OIRA is to spend no more than 120 days reviewing agency draft rules. Besides calling the coal ash issue “complicated,” the White House has not indicated the reason for the delay.