Senators David Vitter (R-LA), James Inhofe (R-OK), Mike Crapo (R-ID) and John Boozman (R-AR) urged the EPA to refrain from using “inflated benefits calculations” for rules designed to reduce the number of fish entering cooling water intake structures. In a letter to Nancy Stoner, acting assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Water, the senators said the EPA’s proposed recalculation is arbitrary and would “allow regulators to justify actions based on public opinion surveys rather than sound science.”

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee’s subpanels on environment and energy are meeting this morning for a hearing titled “Lessons Learned: EPA’s Investigations of Hydraulic Fracturing.” Witnesses include Fred Hauchman, director of the Office of Science Policy at the EPA’s Office of Research and Development; and Brian Rahm of the New York Water Resources Institute at Cornell University.