Back in July, I had a conversation with a person deep inside the EPA air quality business.
She said that the EPA received something like ten million comments on this rule. The sheer volume of the comments was far beyond the ability, the capacity, of EPA to handle.
EPA has a large body of contractors and subcontractors in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. All, that is every one, of the contractors was employed for three months sorting, reading then classifying the comments. Each comment might have several subjects and each of those subjects had to be entered under the proper classification on the monstrous spread sheets that were created. Dealing with the comments required other work to be put aside until the comments glut was dealt with.
Yesterday the EPA head said she had 4.7 million comments. my source says more like 10 million.
Hopefully, it’s 10 million HELL NO’s, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.