{"id":20149,"date":"2014-05-27T14:24:28","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T19:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=20149"},"modified":"2014-05-27T14:24:28","modified_gmt":"2014-05-27T19:24:28","slug":"u-s-supreme-court-wont-hear-attorney-generals-challenge-to-federal-haze-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2014\/05\/27\/u-s-supreme-court-wont-hear-attorney-generals-challenge-to-federal-haze-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Supreme Court Won’t Hear Attorney General’s Challenge to Federal Haze Rule"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Oklahoma<\/a><\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Oklahoma Gas & Electric's coal-fired Sooner Plant in Red Rock, Okla.<\/p>\n<\/div>

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s\u00a0Regional Haze Rule<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0meant to clear the air at national parks and wildlife refuges by reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants.<\/p>

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and Oklahoma Gas and Electric \u2014 the state’s largest utility \u2014 have fought the Regional Haze Rule<\/a> since the EPA rejected the state’s implementation plan in 2012, but it looks like this is the end of the line.<\/p>

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear Pruitt and OG&E’s challenge to a lower court’s ruling in favor of the EPA’s decision to reject the Oklahoma plan.<\/p>

“The Supreme Court\u2019s decision not to hear Oklahoma\u2019s regional haze lawsuit lets stand a bad legal precedent that places the states in an inferior position to EPA\u2019s \u2018command and control\u2019 approach to regional haze regulation,” Pruitt tells StateImpact in an email. “Now, Oklahoma ratepayers will bear billions of dollars in costs for an onerous federal regional haze plan that even the EPA concedes barely provides a discernible difference in the visual quality of air.”<\/p>

In effect, the EPA rule would\u00a0require coal plants in Oklahoma<\/a>\u00a0and dozens of other states to shut down, install expensive air scrubbers, or switch to a different fuel source.<\/p>

In a statement<\/a>, OG&E spokesman Paul Renfrow says he’s disappointed, but that the company will now focus on “meeting the 55-month compliance deadline.” He says it could cost more than $1 billion to make the necessary changes.<\/p>

But the reaction from environmental groups, like The Sierra Club, is just the opposite. Whitney Pearson, an organizer for Oklahoma Chapter of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, says Oklahomans will get the cleaner, safer air they deserve because of Tuesday’s ruling.<\/p>

“OG&E can responsibly replace their coal plants with local clean energy solutions,” Pearson says in a statement. “Wind is at its lowest cost in history and is saving customers money and cleaning the air.”<\/p>

She also praised Public Service Company of Oklahoma \u2014 the state’s second largest utility \u2014 for choosing to gradually phase its coal plants out instead of fighting the EPA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In effect, the EPA rule would require coal plants in Oklahoma and dozens of other states to shut down, install expensive air scrubbers, or switch to a different fuel source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":20153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[490],"tags":[554,499,525,552],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20149"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20173,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20149\/revisions\/20173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}