Federal regulators have well over 1.5 million comments on the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants ahead of Monday evening’s deadline for the public to weigh in.
Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Liz Purchia said the tally had hit about 1.6 million as of Monday morning.
{mosads}Formal comments on the June proposal, which seeks to cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants 30 percent by 2030, are due to the agency by the end of the business day Monday.
Organizations often wait until the last minute to submit their feedback.
Interest groups, companies, lawmakers, individuals and others had nearly five months to comment on the proposal, much longer than the 60 days afforded to most regulations.
The EPA must review all of the comments before making any necessary changes to the rule and publishing its final form in June.
Many major advocacy groups made their opinions known about the proposal early on. Business, energy and conservative interests lambasted the rule as an expensive and illegal overreach by the federal government, while environmentalists applauded it as a major step toward fighting climate change.