{"id":7862,"date":"2012-03-28T15:19:18","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T20:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=7862"},"modified":"2012-03-28T17:15:12","modified_gmt":"2012-03-28T22:15:12","slug":"texas-claims-round-against-epa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/03\/28\/texas-claims-round-against-epa\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Claims Round Against EPA"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_7872\"  class=\"wp-caption module image center\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Oil refineries in Bay City, Texas\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/03\/air-pollution2.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-7872\" title=\"Oil refineries in Bay City, Texas\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/03\/air-pollution2-620x338.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/03\/air-pollution2-620x338.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/03\/air-pollution2-300x163.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Photo by<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Oil refineries in Bay City, Texas<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Texas political leadership was in a celebratory mood today, after news spread that the state had won a battle in its ongoing legal disputes with the Environmental Protection Agency in federal court earlier in the week.<\/p>\n<p>The decision Monday from the 5th US Court of Appeals effectively ordered the Agency to take a second look at TCEQ pollution control procedures. The EPA had initially said those procedures failed to meet the standards of the Clean Air Act. But the court found the Agency&#8217;s reasons were insufficient to prove that case and that it&#8217;s rejection of the Texas rules came long past the deadline when such rules can be nullified.The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oag.state.tx.us\/newspubs\/releases\/2012\/032712pcp_opinion.pdf\">opinion <\/a>read in part:<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The EPA issued its final rule disapproving, inter alia, on September 15, 2010, more than three years after the statutory deadline. Although the EPA averred in its opening \u201cSummary\u201d section that it disapproved Texas\u2019s PCP Standard Permit \u201cbecause it does not meet the requirements of the CAA for a minor NSR Standard Permit program,\u201d id., the EPA again failed to identify a single provision of the Act that Texas\u2019s program violated, let alone explain its reasons for reaching its conclusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Stephen Minnick with the Texas Association of Business told StateImpact Texas he believed that the <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/03\/28\/what-the-new-epa-emissions-rule-means-for-texas\/\">EPA&#8217;s new emissions standards<\/a> announced yesterday could suffer the same fate as the pollution controls.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Fifth Circuit absolutely sent a message to the EPA that the position they took was absolutely wrong [on the pollution controls].&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The TCEQ and state policymakers were also quick to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chron.com\/news\/article\/Texas-wins-latest-round-with-EPA-in-federal-court-3439125.php\">applaud <\/a>the decision as a victory. By afternoon today Governor Rick Perry, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott had all released statements to that effect.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"related-content alignleft\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/03\/28\/what-the-new-epa-emissions-rule-means-for-texas\/\">What the New EPA Emissions Rule Means For\u00a0Texas<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/IMG_2418-copy1-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/poisoned-places\/\">Where Are Toxic Emissions Coming From?<\/a><\/p><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/109921310-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/epa\/\">Everything You Need to Know About the\u00a0EPA<\/a><\/p><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/08\/Screen-shot-2011-11-07-at-7.27.37-AM-60x60.png\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/tceq\/\">What Is The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality?<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>&#8220;This victory marks the second time in the last three months that Texas has successfully obtained relief from the courts after an unlawful overreach by the EPA,\u201d said the The Texas Attorney General.<\/p>\n<p>The mention of a &#8220;second&#8221; victory is presumably a reference to an earlier decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oag.state.tx.us\/oagnews\/release.php?id=3951\">to stay<\/a> new EPA cross-border pollution regulations that had been challenged by Texas power plant company, Luminant.<\/p>\n<p>But all those declarations of victory may be premature. In its decision the court did not tell the EPA that the Texas rules were good ones, simply that the EPA had not done an adequate job showing why they were bad ones.<\/p>\n<p>The Agency now has the opportunity to take another look at Texas Pollution Control laws and craft another argument as to why they do not meet the standards of the Clean Air Act.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Texas political leadership was in a celebratory mood today, after news spread that the state had won a battle in its ongoing legal disputes with the Environmental Protection Agency in federal court earlier in the week. The decision Monday from the 5th US Court of Appeals effectively ordered the Agency to take a second look [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[96,87,39],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7883,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7862\/revisions\/7883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}