{"id":12080,"date":"2012-06-06T12:53:45","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T17:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=12080"},"modified":"2012-06-06T13:02:50","modified_gmt":"2012-06-06T18:02:50","slug":"looking-beyond-the-rhetoric-at-epa-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/06\/06\/looking-beyond-the-rhetoric-at-epa-enforcement\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking at EPA Enforcement, Beyond the Rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by STAN HONDA\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>

Tony Waldrope of the Garner spill response cleaning company walks among tubes used to contain an oil spill in flood waters at the idle Valero oil refinery 25 September 2005 in Port Arthur, Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita.<\/p><\/div>\n

The saying goes, “Don’t Mess With Texas,” and that was certainly the attitude on\u00a0display\u00a0today when a group of Texas regulators testified before a Congressional committee in Washington.<\/p>\n

At a the hearing of the House\u00a0Committee\u00a0on Energy and Commerce’s\u00a0Subcommittee on Energy and Power\u00a0entitled\u00a0\u201cEPA Enforcement Priorities and Practices<\/a>,” the head of the Railroad Commission of Texas, Barry Smitherman, and the chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Bryan Shaw, took turns criticizing the\u00a0Environmental\u00a0Protection Agency (EPA) and its recently-resigned regional director Al Armedariz <\/a>(who was also supposed to testify at the hearing, but canceled at the last minute<\/a>). Smitherman and Shaw, along with other oil, gas and energy representatives, aired their usual grievances: the EPA has overreacted to allegations of fracking contamination, whether in Texas, Pennsylvania, or Wyoming; and the states are doing a fine job of regulating themselves without any intervention needed from the feds.\u00a0There’s a wrap-up <\/a>in the Texas Tribune<\/em> by Kate Galbraith, but suffice it to say there’s little news to be had. Texas regulators don’t like the EPA, and the sky is still blue.<\/p>\n

But there was one member of the panel that brought some statistical calm to the proceedings. Joel Mintz<\/a>, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, has studied the EPA for three decades. And he told the committee that despite all the anti-EPA rhetoric being used to attack the Obama administration, enforcement at the agency hasn’t changed since the president took office.<\/p>\n

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