“The Environmental Protection Agency should reject Governor Perdue’s waiver request out of hand,” according to RFA’s statement. “While this drought has caused stress in many agricultural communities, it has not caused the kind of widespread economic harm that is the threshold for EPA to act."
Perdue’s request follows a letter to the EPA from the Governors of Delaware and Maryland in support of the livestock sector’s appeal to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to issue a waiver of the mandate. All three governors are Democrats.
The EPA is required to consider a waiver of the RFS if an official request comes from a refiner or governor. However, the RFA argued that “a waiver of the RFS will not provide the relief meat and livestock producers seek nor will it make it rain on dry corn fields and pastures.”
“What waiving the RFS would do is send chilling signals to investors in new biofuel technologies, threaten to force gas prices higher than they already are, and dramatically lower the availability of ethanol feed products on which the livestock industry is growing to rely,” according to the statement.
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