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THE NEW MEXICAN Tuesday, June 24, 2014
EPA: Agency satisfied with ruling Continued from Page A-1 Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined that part of the decision. The agency expressed satisfaction with the ruling. “The Supreme Court’s decision is a win for our efforts to reduce carbon pollution because it allows EPA, states and other permitting authorities to continue to require carbon pollution limits in permits for the largest pollution sources,” the agency said in a statement. Another part of the decision rejected, in harsh terms, the agency’s primary rationale for the regulations. The agency had contended it would interpret the Clean Air Act to require regulation of far fewer stationary sources of pollution than the law seemed to require. “An agency has no power to ‘tailor’ legislation to bureaucratic policy goals by rewriting unambiguous statutory terms,” Scalia wrote. Roberts, Kennedy and justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined that part of the decision, which was decided by a 5-4 vote. The National Federation of Independent Business welcomed what it said was the Supreme Court’s refusal to allow the agency to rewrite the statute. “If this rule had been allowed to stand, small-business owners such as ranchers, farmers, manufacturers, restaurant owners and others would have seen more paperwork, more oversight and fines,” the group said in a statement. The decision did reject the
agency’s primary rationale for the regulations. It did not seem to directly affect the administration’s recently announced plans to cut carbon pollution under a different set of regulations. The regulations challenged in Monday’s decision built on the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in 2007 in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, which required the agency to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles if it found that they endangered public health or welfare. The agency made such a finding, saying that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” pose a danger to “current and future generations,” and it set limits on emissions from new vehicles. The agency said its regulation of tailpipe emissions also required regulation of emissions from stationary sources under two permitting programs. While acknowledging that the relevant provisions of the Clean Air Act fit such emissions imperfectly, the agency said the law nonetheless compelled it to require permits. The Clean Air Act says those programs cover all sources that can annually emit 100 or 250 tons of the relevant pollutant, a threshold that works tolerably well for conventional air pollutants like lead and carbon monoxide. But that threshold, applied to greenhouse gases, which are emitted in far greater amounts, would require the regulation of millions of sources of pollution. Applying the law as written would increase the number
of covered sources under one program to more than 80,000, from fewer than 280, reaching commercial and residential sources and subjecting them to expenses averaging almost $60,000, according to a decision under review, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A second program would reach 6 million sources, subjecting them to expenses of more than $20,000 each. The cost of the programs would rise to $21 billion from $62 million. The agency said Congress could not have intended such an “absurd result.” Its solution was to raise the statutory emissions threshold to 75,000 to 100,000 tons per year, thus reaching far fewer facilities. This was, it said, a permissible exercise of discretion and one subject to tightening over time. States and industry groups challenged the regulations on many grounds, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce calling them “the most burdensome, costly, far-reaching program ever adopted by a United States regulatory agency.” The Supreme Court limited the issue it would consider to whether the agency “permissibly determined that its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouses gases.” The case decided Monday was Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 12-1146.
China: Political pressure nudges
Chinese firms to invest in U.S. Continued from Page A-1 lined up to welcome Chinese investors. Southern states, touting low labor and land costs, have been especially aggressive. In the case of the Pine Hill plant, tax breaks, some Southern hospitality and a tray of homemade banana pudding helped, too. “Get off the plane and the mayor is waiting for you,” says Hong Kong billionaire Ronnie Chan. In March, Dothan, Ala., held a two-day U.S.-China manufacturing symposium, drawing dozens of potential Chinese investors. On sale were T-shirts reading: “Ni hao, y’all” — combining the Chinese version of “hello” with a colloquial Southernism. Chinese executives wandered around during a street festival, experiencing Americana by snapping photos of vintage ’60s muscle cars. A Chinese company, in a deal negotiated before the symposium, announced it would bring a 3-D printing operation to Dothan. Among other Chinese projects in the United States that are creating jobs: u In Moraine, Ohio, Chinese glassmaker Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co. is taking over a plant that General Motors abandoned in 2008 and creating at least 800 jobs. The site puts Fuyao within four hours’ drive of auto plants in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. u In Lancaster County, S.C., Chinese textile manufacturer Keer Group is investing $218 million in a plant to make industrial yarn and will employ 500. South Carolina nudged the deal along with a $4 million grant. u In Gregory, Texas, Tianjin Pipe is investing more than $1 billion in a factory that makes pipes for oil and gas drillers. The company expects to begin production late this year or early in 2015. It will have 50 to 70 employees by the end of this year and 400 to 500 by the end of 2017. The United States and China have long maintained a lopsided relationship: China makes things. America buys them. The U.S. trade deficit in goods with China last year hit a record $318 billion. And for three decades, numerous U.S. manufacturers have moved operations to China. The flow is at least starting to move the other way. One reason is that in the past decade, the cost of labor, adjusted for productivity gains, has surged 187 percent at Chinese factories,
compared with just 27 percent in the United States, according to Boston Consulting Group. In addition, Chinese electricity costs rose 66 percent, more than twice the United States’ increase. The start of large-scale U.S. shale gas production has helped contain U.S. electricity costs. And the value of China’s currency has risen more than 30 percent against the U.S. dollar over the past decade. The higher yuan has raised the cost of Chinese goods sold abroad and, conversely, made U.S. goods more affordable in China. Those rising costs have cut China’s competitive edge. In 2004, manufacturing cost 14 percent less in China than in the United States; that advantage has narrowed to 5 percent. If the trend toward higher wages, energy costs and a higher currency continues, Boston Consulting predicts, U.S. manufacturing will be less expensive than China’s by 2018. Cost isn’t the only allure. As Chinese companies build more sophisticated products, they want to work more directly with U.S. customers. “Being close to the marketplace is good for everybody,” says Loretta Lee, a Hong Kong entrepreneur who just opened a shoe factory in Tennessee. Sometimes, political pressure nudges Chinese firms into investing in America. Tianjin Pipe, for instance, began building its Texas plant after the U.S. imposed sanctions against Chinese-made pipes in 2010, notes Thilo Hanemann, Rhodium’s research director. Local officials here in southwestern Alabama went out of their way to lure Golden Dragon, which wanted to build a plant to make copper tubing for air conditioners. At first, the company considered Thomasville, just across the border in Clarke County. But Thomasville didn’t have any suitable sites after Golden Dragon decided it needed three times as much space as originally sought. “I was almost in a panic,” recalls Thomasville Mayor Sheldon Day. But Day spotted an industrial park in Wilcox County with plenty of space. Day says he didn’t mind the project going to a neighboring county. The plant would employ Thomasville residents, too. And there was another benefit: Wilcox County — stuck with 15.5 percent unemployment, Alabama’s highest — qualified for extra aid. It landed $8 mil-
lion in state and federal grants to help build an annex road and sewage lines for the project. Wilcox County also gave the company 100 acres of a 274acre industrial park it bought for $1.2 million and a break on local property taxes. And Alabama offered to reimburse the company up to $20 million of its costs for building the $100 million factory. It will get the full amount if it ends up hiring 500 people, says George Alford of the Wilcox County Industrial Development Authority. Local officials assembled all the public agencies and utilities Golden Dragon will have to deal with — from Alabama Power to the Port of Mobile — in one room on one day so company executives could have their questions answered at once. The message, Day said, was: “If you come here, we’ll hold your hand.” A banquet was organized with both traditional Southern fare, such as pinkeye purple hull peas, and Chinese dishes from Thomasville’s New China Buffet restaurant. When the visiting Chinese were seen devouring homemade banana pudding, “we took them the whole tray,” Day says. To prepare for future banquets, Thomasville is buying Chinese-style dining tables with built-in turntables. Still, culture and language can remain a barrier. Local officials hastily replaced a blackand-white banner welcoming Golden Dragon after learning that the colors signified a funeral to the Chinese. “Nobody wants a faux pas,” says John Clyde Riggs, executive director of a regional planning commission. Golden Dragon and the future Dothan 3D join two other Chinese firms in Alabama: Continental Motors in Mobile makes piston engines for aircraft. And Shandong Swan USA in Montgomery makes saws for cotton gins. Alabama and other Southern states have followed the example of South Carolina, which nabbed the first Chinese plant in America 14 years ago when appliance giant Haier built a refrigerator plant in Camden. John Ling, who runs South Carolina’s Shanghai office, has an empty factory he’s pitching to Chinese firms. It’s been shuttered for four years — since the former owners closed it and moved the jobs to China. “We will see more and more Chinese projects coming,” Ling says. “It’s at the very beginning.”
In brief
harder during this recession than in previous downturns.
Report tallies high toll from global warming
For women in midlife, work gains slip away A small but economically significant group of women is bucking a powerful decades-long movement of women of all ages into the labor market. In the years since the last recession began, many women in their late 40s and early 50s have left the workforce just as they were reaching their peak earning years. The demands on middle-aged women to care for their parents, particularly during difficult economic times that force many families to share resources, are not the only reason for the shift. Some economists also attribute the unexpected phenomenon to extensive budget cuts by state and local governments, which employ women in large numbers and were hit
More than 1 million homes and businesses along the nation’s coasts could flood repeatedly before ultimately being destroyed. Entire states in the Southeast and the Corn Belt may lose much of their agriculture as farming shifts northward in a warming world. Heat and humidity will probably grow so intense that spending time outside will become physically dangerous, throwing industries like construction and tourism into turmoil. That is the picture of what may happen to the U.S. economy in a world of unchecked global warming, according to a major report being put forward Tuesday by a coalition of senior political and economic figures from the left, right and center. The New York Times
DWI: 2 pronounced dead on scene Continued from Page A-1 the Pontiac were pronounced dead on the scene. Police have identified the victims as Leo Gurule, 23, of Española and Carlos Archuleta, 45, of Santa Cruz.
Online jail records show Romero was released Monday afternoon. Rio Arriba County Detention Facility Director Larry Deyapp said Romero was suspended without pay before he resigned.
Online court records show Romero was charged with possession of an open container in June 2013, but the case was dismissed. Deyapp said Romero was off duty Thursday when the fatal accident occurred.
Teen: Officers interviewed Friday Continued from Page A-1 State Police interviewed the two officers on Friday, 12 days after the fatal shooting. Kassestas said the delay was due to a request from the officers’ legal counsel. He added that an officerinvolved shooting investigation is like other homicide investigations in which suspects need to be interviewed voluntarily. In a news release, Lt. Emmanuel Gutierrez, spokesman for New Mexico State Police, said the agency is working to conclude the investigation and present the final report to the district attorney. State police, who are conducting the investigation at the request of Española police, said Villalpando had called 911 on Sunday morning and reported that a suspicious person was armed with a gun and hitting himself with a stick. In the phone call, Villalpando identified himself as “James,” state police said. In a three-minute recording of the 911 call, provided by Española’s 911 center, a caller identified as “James” describes a male acting erratically near a doughnut shop called Lovin Oven. “I’m over here at Lovin Oven,” the caller says, “and there’s some crazy kid out here, and I don’t know what he’s doing, but it looks like he had a gun in his hands, and I don’t know if it’s real.” State police have said the teen made similar calls to 911 on June 5 and June 6, reporting a suspicious person and identifying himself as “James.” On Monday, Shure said his grandfather owned a generic toy company in Chicago, now closed, that made toy guns. But, he said, it’s possible Villalpando was carrying a toy cap gun that the grandfather bought in Italy and gave it to the family many years ago. The family has said Villalpando spent the night before his death at a friend’s house in Española, near where he was shot. Villalpando told a friend he was going out for a walk and would be back soon, the brother said. Shure said the teen was carrying a “karate stick” he used in
State police say that Victor Villalpando, a 16-year-old boy shot by Española police earlier this month, pointed a cap gun, possibly similar to the ones above, at officers. COURTESY PHOTOS
street dance performances and was known to carry a pocketknife. In an April 2014 memo, Garcia directed all Española officers to use dashboard cameras, lapel cameras and digital audio recorders when they interact with the public. But he has said he did not know if the officers had video-recording equipment with them at the time of the shooting. Villalpando was a gymnastics instructor, taught hip-hop and studied ballet at Moving Arts Española, a nonprofit performing arts center. He recently had been accepted into the dance program at the state-chartered New Mexico School for the Arts in Santa Fe.
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