EPA Crackdown In Texas

It's as if this administration looks for ways to continue to hurt the economy. This has an element of State's Rights in it, as well.

DALLAS (AP) -- For 15 years, environmentalists have complained that state regulations have allowed the powerful oil and chemical industries to skirt Clean Air Act standards in Texas, the nation's foremost producer of industrial air pollution.

But the Environmental Protection Agency last month scrapped several aspects of the state's air-pollution permitting program, including "flexible" permits that have allowed about 140 plants and refineries to exceed toxic emissions limits in the short term as long as they complied to overall federal averages in the long term.

Federal regulators say the move, set to take effect next year, is designed to cut toxic emissions and bring Texas in line with the Clean Air Act. And environmental groups say it will help improve the state's ecology and the health of Texans and those living nearby.

Industry groups, however, warn that getting rid of the state program in favor of more rigid standards will hurt industries crucial to the Texas economy, and that the costs of compliance may hit consumers.

Comments

[Scrapiron]

Time for Texas to leave the union. Just give prior notice so I can get there and become a citizen of the new country without the hassle of imigration. My daughters and grandchildren already live there..

[Southen Values]

If Texas leaves the Union, can you take your pollution with you?

[SDN]

No, we're going to deport you.

[seekeronos]

By 2025, I could easily see TX, MT, ND, SD, and ID breaking off to form their own republics, and possibly WA and OR breaking off to form Cascadia, and if we are real lucky, VT and maybe even NH cleaving off to Quebec, leaving a somewhat weaker, extremely statist/socialist, financially ruined, and potentially hungry rump-USA behind.