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Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the ability to more stringently regulate dust. If the EPA determines more stringent standards are necessary, family farmers and ranchers, as well as rural economies, would be devastated.

Dust is part of rural America. It is completely unreasonable for the EPA to put a price tag on communities for carrying out activities essential to their well-being. This is a prime example of federal regulations gone too far.

Everyone wants clean air and clean water, but my hope is that we will not regulate it to the point where we drive businesses and industries out of this country, to the point where entrepreneurs cannot start or expand their businesses because they simply can't afford to do so.

Despite Arizona's remarkable growth in recent years, we have met the current federal health standards for ozone pollution and the Environmental Protection Agency recently approved our dust control plan.

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.

It seems the EPA has worked hard to devise new regulations that are designed to eliminate coal mining, coal burning, usage of coal.

I am not convinced the Clean Air Act was ever intended to regulate or classify as a dangerous pollutant something as basic and ubiquitous in our atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

The regulations keep on coming. And we are trying to make decisions that we will be happy with for decades.

Why has it seemed that the only way to protect the environment is with heavy-handed government regulation?

We have very strong environmental laws in the United States and elsewhere around the world. The problem is that they're seldom enforced.