Coal Industry Drive Against EPA Will Shadow Obama’s Campaign - Bloomberg

As President Barack Obama toured an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers training center in Pennsylvania on Oct. 11, two television commercials made their debuts on local Pittsburgh stations. Both criticized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s pending regulations on reducing mercury emissions and accused the administration of backing a job-killing new rule. Both were sponsored by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. They were among the first wave of commercials opposing the EPA aired by the coal industry in a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort that will shadow Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012. Two months later, Pittsburgh residents got a look at another commercial, this one embracing the new emission limits. It was sponsored by the American Lung Association, a long- standing charitable health organization, and underwritten in part by Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK), the most active U.S. oil and natural gas driller and a coal industry competitor.