The Hill reported Thursday that major business groups want to grow opposition to the EPA's ground-level ozone regulations. A cost-benefit analysis shows that the cost to industry will reach in the hundreds of billions of dollars with little if any health benefit gained. In western states, Chinese ozone pollution is offsetting air quality improvements.

The chamber introduces Jack Field, a Yakima, Wash., cattle rancher who fears what the Environmental Protection Agency's Waters of the U.S. rule will mean when the agency usurps local water regulating and places it in the hands of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

Field and his wife run a herd of about 120 cows. "We're a small operation, but we're trying to grow it into a something bigger," Field said. Enter the oppressive new water rule that expands the definition of federally protected water and gives federal regulators unprecedented authority over land Field uses for grazing. As Field puts it, anyone with a postage stamp (like anti-business environmental groups) can sue him in federal court forcing him to hire lawyers to prove he isn't violating the WOTUS rule, for example, when heavy rain creates a temporary runoff in a pasture.

The EPA can claim jurisdiction over any "waters" that are deemed to be adjacent to streams, wetlands and creeks.

In Alabama, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said Alabama has joined 17 other states to ask a federal appeals court judge to block the rule, which took effect in 37 states on Aug. 28. The 18-state coalition, filed the motion to stay Wednesday before the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio, al.com reported.

In mid-America, the EPA's new "Clean Air" regulation is affecting Ameren's Meramec coal-fired power plant in St. Louis, which the company said will close by 2022 or earlier due mostly to the EPA's stricter carbon emission limits. "The EPA, without ever answering for the steps it skipped in the rulemaking process, issued its final Clean Power Plan carbon emission rules in early August," the Chamber said in its article, "A Power Plant, Zapped by EPA Overreach."

John Cooper supervises systems at the Meramec plant and fears for the thousands of jobs that will be lost. His concern is about the speed at which the changes being implemented by EPA will affect his work and life. He wrote the EPA that, "[Y}ou also need to understand that not only is our environment at stake but also the livelihoods of thousands of utility workers and the tax revenues these facilities provide."

On the East Coast, Drew Greenblatt owns a small manufacturing company, Marlin Steel, in Baltimore. He wants to expand, add good, middle-class jobs and grow revenue. But he told the Chamber that his plans may die due to the "onerous new regulations coming down the pipe from Washington."

Greenblatt believes the EPA's ozone standard rule - a reduction from 75 parts per billion to 70 ppb, already a strict limit set just seven years ago - will place hundreds of counties in non-compliance, forcing Marlin Steel customers to increase compliance costs. "Every dollar spent complying with the new rules is one less dollar those manufacturers have to invest back into their firms and purchase new machinery," the Chamber said.

Several longtime clients told Greenblatt that the EPA's new ozone rules will put a freeze on any expansion or investment plans. The result: more manufacturing will export to countries such as China and India, already among the world's leading polluters and which the new EPA rules do not affect.