Coal baron's wish list is now to-do list

Energy Department follows suggested regulation changes.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s fifirst year in offiffice has been a boon for the coal industry, with the Trump administration rolling back regulations on coalf ifired power plants and withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate change agreement.

Environmentalists have expressed alarm at the new direction, and have complained that Trump was following a blueprint from the coal industry. A confifidential memo written by the head of the country’s largest coal mining company suggests they might not be wrong.

The memo was written by Robert E. Murray, a longtime Trump supporter who donated $ 300,000 to the president’s inauguration. In it, Murray, the head of Murray Energy, presented Trump with a wish list of environmental rollbacks just weeks after the inauguration.

Nearly a year later, the White House and federal agencies have completed or are on track to fulfifill most of the 14 detailed requests, even with Monday’s decision by federal regulators to reject a proposal by Energy Secretary Rick Perry to subsidize struggling coal and nuclear plants.

The March 1 memo, which was obtained by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and shared with The New York Times, is addressed to Vice President Mike Pence. The sweeping wish list of regulatory overhauls includes ending regulations ongreenhouse gas emissions and ozone and mine safety as well as cutting the staffff of the Environmental Protection Agency “at least in half” and overhauling the Labor Department’s offiffice of mine safety.

“I give President Trump and his administration credit for being bold, being passionate and being correct in addressing a lot of these issues that were on my list here,” Murray said Tuesday.

Photographs of portions of ad if ff ff ff ff ff fe rent memo, dated March 23 and addressed to Rick Perry, the secretary of the Department of Energy, were obtained by the magazine In These Times last year. Theywere takenduring a meeting Murray held on March 29 with Perry and others at the EnergyDepartment, according to the magazine.

Murray on Tuesday described the memos as very similar.

The March 1 “Action Plan for the Administration of President Donald J. Trump” is aimed, Murraywroteinthe memo, at “gettingAmerica’s coal miners back to work.” He also asks the federal government to cut funding for carbon capture and sequestration technology — which Murray called“a pseudonym for ‘nocoal’”— andeliminate a 2009 EPA ruling known as the endangerment fifinding that was the legal justification for much of the Obama administration’s climate change policy.

“This list was to remain private, a list of things that needed to be done for reliable, low- cost electricity in America,” Murray said. “ThatwasmyNo. 1 goalhere, was to give guidance to the administration in an area that I have observed over 60 years.”

Critics say Murray’s list and the apparent ease with which he was able to get it in front of Cabinet offifficials and others illustrates the open-door access the Trump administration has of ff ff ff ff ff fe red energy and other industries as it moves to redirect and weaken federal regulations.

“The astonishing presumption of this list ,” White house said. “It’s an extraordinary arrogance of the fossil fuel industry basedon the power they wield in Washington, D.C.” He said even though Murray had bragged about the action plan on a “Frontline” documentary last year, the Energy Department had declined his requests to immediately release the memo.

“The power of the fossil fuel industry around here is so great I think the industry feels they can count on simply not complying with requests,” Whitehouse said.

The Energy Department did not respond to a request to discuss the memos from Murray.

The Trump administration has had an unusually close relationshipwithMurray. He and 10 of his miners were invited to watch the president sign an executive order to roll back PresidentBarackObama’s climate change regulations. He has metwithPerry to discuss the needs of coal producers. His longtime attorney, Andrew Wheeler, is awaiting Senate confirmation to the No. 2 slot at the EPA, and David Zatezalo, the nation’s new top mine safety and health regulator and previously the president of a coal mining company, told his hometown paper thatMurray had encouraged him to put his hat in the ring for the job.

Jeffffffffffffrey Holmstead, a lawyer with the fifirmBracewell and a deputy administrator of the EPA in the George W. Bush administration, called Murray’s action plan “an ambitious list.” While interest groups always try toinflfluencepolicyinanewadministration, HolmsteadsaidMurray’s statuswith the administration set him apart.

“I really don’t think it’s at all unusual that Murray would have this wish list or a set of recommendations. What makes it difffffffffffferent is that it’s pretty clear that he has a personal relationship with the president,” Holmstead said. “It seems like given Mr. Murray’s relationshipwith the president that he had more of an expectation that these things were going to be accepted or implemented.”

One item not on the list yet important to Murray was an order the Federal Energy Regulatory CommissionrejectedMonday to subsidize struggling coal and nuclear power plants. Murray railed against that decision, saying it would lead to the decommissioning of coal and nuclear power plants.

Environmental groups have accused Murray of directly asking Perry for a proposedrule toreward coal andnuclear powerplants for providing “grid resiliency.” TheMarch 1memo does not mention the grid, though photographs of the cover page of the March 23 document toPerry obtainedby In These Times shows its focus is “a plan for achieving reliable andlowcost electricity.”

Soon afterMurray’smeetingatDOE, Perryorderedthe agency toprepare a study on the country’s electric grid reliability, a precursor to ordering the federal government to subsidize struggling coal and nuclear plants.

Murray and a spokesman, Gary Broadbent, said the difffffffffffference between the twomemoswas that the one provided to Perry asked the EnergyDepartment to study the security of the nation’s power grid.

“I suggested that the study be made,” Murray said. “What they did from there, the administration did. I did not have involvement in it.”One of the items on the 14-point list was an overhaul ofFERCregulators, and the Trump administration accomplished that. But those commissioners voted against the plan to bail out coal and nuclear. “Obviously they forgot who appointed them right out of the box,” Murray said.