Texas challenges EPA on overturning permit program
Texas is appealing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's overturning of a 16-year-old Texas air permitting program.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Monday he filed the state's petition for reconsideration with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.
The EPA had said the state's so-called flexible permit program violated the Clean Air Act. The state's program set a general limit on how much air pollutants an entire facility can release.
The federal Clean Air Act requires state-issued permits to set limits on each of the dozens of individual production units inside a plant. EPA officials say the program makes regulating pollution impossible.
Gov. Rick Perry praised the appeal in a statement Monday, saying "the EPA's overreach is as potentially devastating as it is unnecessary."
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