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EPA takes over Texas pollution permits

Quote:

EPA takes over Texas pollution permits
Feds decide state is unwilling to do anything on greenhouse gases
By R.G. RATCLIFFE
AUSTIN BUREAU
Dec. 24, 2010, 10:42AM

AUSTIN — The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday effectively declared Texas unfit to regulate its own greenhouse gas emissions and took over carbon dioxide permitting of any new or expanding industrial facilities starting Jan. 2.

The EPA also set up a framework for regulating greenhouse gas emissions in seven other states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Oregon and Wyoming. In addition, the agency set a timetable on establishing regulated levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

The action will give the EPA permitting authority over refineries, power plants and cement facilities in Texas, the agency said, but will not affect small pollution source facilities, such as restaurants and farms.

Environmentalists praised the EPA for taking action to make the nation's air cleaner and to protect the ozone layer. But industry groups and Gov. Rick Perry's office said the EPA takeover will create unnecessary restrictions that could cost jobs.

About a year of threats and lawsuits preceded Thursday's actions by the national and regional EPA offices. The agency earlier this year won a lawsuit in federal court giving it the power to regulate greenhouse gases.

Texas recently lost a bid for a federal restraining order aimed at keeping the EPA from enforcing its greenhouse gas rules on the state.

EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz, in a letter to industry, said the EPA will take permitting away from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Jan. 2, 2011. Armendariz said 167 permits that are pending or are about to be filed will be affected by the order.

The order does not affect existing permits.
Texas' stance clear

Armendariz said state officials had made it clear in letters to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, in news media statements and its legal challenges that Texas had "no intention of implementing this portion of the federal air permitting program."

He added, "The unwillingness of Texas state officials to implement this portion of the federal program leaves EPA no choice but to resume its role as a Clean Air Act permitting authority in the state."
Lawsuit continuing

Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said the state's lawsuit against the EPA is continuing in an effort to prove the agency never was given authority by Congress to regulate greenhouse gases.

"The EPAs misguided plan paints a huge target on the backs of Texas agriculture and energy producers by implementing unnecessary, burdensome mandates on our state's energy sector, threatening hundreds of thousands of Texas jobs and imposing increased living costs on Texas families," Cesinger said.

She said the state's flexible air quality permitting system led to a 22 percent reduction in ozone and a 53 percent decrease in nitric oxide emissions since 2000.

The TCEQ, which has been handling the permits, issued a statement saying the EPA has no means of measuring whether carbon dioxide emissions are reduced as a result of more stringent permit requirements. The agency said carbon dioxide levels measure about the same all over the earth so a focus should be on other pollutants.

The American Petroleum Institute called the EPA actions "coercive."

"The administration's focus should be on job creation and economic recovery, not unnecessary and burdensome regulations that will threaten jobs and create a drag on business efforts to invest, expand and put people back to work," said the institute's regulatory affairs director Howard Feldman.
A positive, maybe

Neil Carman of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club characterized the EPA's actions as a positive step toward controlling a major pollutant.

Carman said, however, that the development is unlikely to directly affect the ongoing state battle with the EPA over its flexible permitting process on other pollutants.

The EPA likely will establish carbon dioxide levels for refineries that are doing major upgrades without actually requiring the companies to install equipment to meet those guidelines, Carman suggested.

He said many companies already are planning to install more energy efficient and less polluting equipment because it saves money.

"I view this as a positive," Carman said. "But we're going to have to wait and see."

r.g.ratcliffe@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/7352160.html

I sincerely hope Texas tells them to "pound sand". I think the most effective action they can take is to simply ignore the EPA. Either that or nullification. The sad truth is - no matter who blinks, the America we used to believe in will lose.

This started a long time before Obama was president. Personally, I prefer not to taste the air I breathe. when I drive into town after a week on the road, I like to see beautiful sunsets, not brown scuz on the horizon. Letting industries get away with whatever they want is not free enterprise nor sensible long term business practices. Personally, I hope the EPA nails Perry's ass to the wall. He is an arrogant asshole trying to cater to special interests to fund his presidential ambitions.

This is an olde on-going situation here in Texas, and the truth of the matter lies somewhere between the State's actions (or in-actions in this instance) and the EPAs demands.

This may actually prove to be one of those accidental good things which come along every millennium or so.

And so it goes...

Richard

Texas will blink.

Reason is that it is easier for industry to buy lax regulations with campaign contributions to the state than to the feds.

And "Cap and Trade" gets one step closer to being the law of the land. I don't know about the rest of you but I can't afford it. Nor do I want to see Al Bore and cronies get richer at the nation's expense. Sometimes the conspiracy theorists are right. YMMV.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peregrino (Post 365705)

You can't afford it, nor can I and neither can the State of Kansas. The Kansas utilities people said 2 years ago our prices would rise 50% if and when 'Cap & Trade' was enforced. Prior to that former Governor Kathleen Sebelius (Now DHHS Czar) vetoed new construction of needed coal plants. She was in favor of 'Alternative Energy' such as wind farms i.e. bird kilers which require large expanses of open range.

Now when I was a kid the coal plants at BPU and KCPL belched black soot, but it has been several decades since I have seen anything other than condensate blowing off any of those plants. The clean coal gets cleaner with every plant they build.

We also have the Wolf Creek Nuclear Plant which like many similar facilities has likely exceeded it's intended life span....and they keep him-hawing about that.

And all the while China is opening dirty coal plants on a daily basis.

It's almost like Al Gore and others sit down contrived a new game of 3 Card Monte that benefits themselves, their political agenda and their donor base.