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Friday, March 29, 2024

Texas, 18 other states urge EPA to end alleged federal overreach

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AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced March 7 that he has joined 18 other states in a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt urging an end to alleged federal overreach.

 

“For the last eight years, politics, not law, drove the shape and character of this country’s environmental regulations,” Paxton said. “The EPA now has the opportunity to correct that error under the leadership of Pruitt. We therefore invite the agency to turn away from its recent practices and bring its rulemaking back into compliance with the very statutes from which it derives its authority. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act expressly affirm that the states have the primary responsibility to care for the environment. It is about time the EPA respected that role.”


 

The states’ letter includes examples of federal overreach, such as the Regional Haze Rule in Texas. According to Paxton, Texas set forth a reasonable plan to deal with regional raze but the Obama administration's EPA rejected the plan and imposed federal guidelines that cost $2 billion. Paxton says those guidelines produced no visibility changes.

 

Joining Texas in the letter are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wyoming, along with Kentucky and Mississippi through their governors.

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