As you probably know, the SOAH judges recommended to the TCEQ Commissioners that the air permit for Las Brisas be denied again and we have been waiting to see if the TCEQ Commissioners are going to listen to the judges, doctors and scientists and the people of Texas at all, or just bend over for industry again. (Anybody taking any bets on that one?)
The LBEC permit did not make it onto the December agenda for the TCEQ Commissioner Meeting and many had previously seen this as a sort of deadline - new air quality standards were to go into effect at the first of this year that would make the permit a dud that would need to be re-written and would require for Las Brisas to do all the things they have refused to do in order to get permit, so...we'd win. (Feel the "but" coming?)
But...the EPA is delaying implementation of those new standards. Some people still think that missing the January deadline is very significant in the demise of LBEC, but I am not sure that is going to be the case. And there are other issues.
After months and months of warnings that it would do so if Texas would not enforce the Clean Air Act on its own, the EPA has told Texas that it will take over permitting in Texas, since someone has to enforce the law. Our governor, who fancies himself some sort of cowboy-secessionist (watch out, America - he's coming - I apologize profusely on behalf of my state for what we've been producing over here), has had his Attorney General file suit against the EPA for this blatant violation of state's rights (sound familiar?), blah, blah, blah. The first federal court this was filed in just sort of laughed, I guess, and refused to hear the petition. But you can't say that Perry's folks aren't dogged and word is that they found a court (somewhere in DC) that has agreed to hear them.
So a lot is still up in the air (so to speak) and there is still a lot of work to do.
2 comments:
Sounds like you are mocking state's rights. Surprisingly living in Texas and mocking state's rights as well.
Interesting.
When states rights are used as an excuse for things like bigotry and poisoning children, which are the only two times I seem to see them coming up in the public discourse, then yep - I'm going to be mocking them. Pity that those are the only songs we here from people who claim so erroneously to be on the side of the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation didn't work for us.
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