Toomey "Dismayed" By Power Plant Closures

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

March 1, 2012 | 11:15 AM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, during an August 2011 town hall meeting in Tioga County

Here’s what Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey has to say about the closure of five coal-fired Pennsylvania power plants, due to tighter new federal regulations:

The plants in Birdsboro, Elrama, New Castle, Portland and Shawville employ about 315 people.
“I am dismayed by the news that hundreds of Pennsylvanians will lose their jobs because of this impending wave of federal regulations. While I fully support sensible, existing power plant regulations to protect our air, the cumulative effect of these new rules, which are some of the costliest in the EPA’s history, is overwhelming, will cost Pennsylvania almost 315 jobs, and will likely raise electricity prices for consumers and businesses during this fragile economic recovery,” Sen. Toomey said.
Sen. Toomey has signed on to two resolutions of disapproval to stop the implementation of two new costly environmental regulations: the Cross State Air Pollution Rule and Utility MACT.