Federal Appeals Court Rules Against Oklahoma and OG&E on Air Pollution Plan

• Joe Wertz
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  Joe Wertz was a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma from 2011-2019. He reported on energy and environment issues for national NPR audiences and other national outlets. He previously worked as a managing editor, assistant editor and staff reporter at several major Oklahoma newspapers and studied journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to reject Oklahoma’s air pollution plan and impose stricter standards was upheld Friday by the U.S. 10th Circuit Court in Denver.

“We conclude that the EPA has authority to review the state’s plan and that it lawfully exercised that authority in rejecting it and promulgating its own,” the appeals court wrote in its 2-1 decision, which is embedded above.

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and Oklahoma Gas & Electric had asked the appeals court to overturn the EPA’s plan to rein in pollution at two of the utility’s coal-fueled power plants. Pruitt and officials at OG&E said carrying out the EPA’s plan would be unnecessarily expensive and infringed on the state’s regulatory authority.

Pruitt and OG&E had asked the Denver-based court to overturn the EPA plan on grounds that the agency usurped the state’s authority and that the plan will require sizable expenditures on unnecessary technology.