Read time: 6 mins By Sharon Kelly • Wednesday, January 13, 2021 - 08:54
Four environmental groups sued Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Andrew Wheeler last week, alleging that the agency stood by while Texas failed to enforce the nation’s federal environmental laws and adequately control air pollution in the state.
“For too long, EPA has turned a blind eye as Texas has routinely violated the federal Clean Air Act by rubber-stamping weak permits for the state’s biggest polluters,” Gabriel Clark-Leach, senior attorney for one of the groups, the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), said in a statement as the lawsuit was filed on January 4.
After reading Southerly and WWNO/WRKF’s recent investigation, Louisiana native David LaCerte says the issue is “something that all of our leaders should be
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January 5, 2021
Environmental organizations filed a complaint in the District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday against Andrew Wheeler as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asking the court to rule that the defendant must respond to eight petitions the plaintiffs filed. The petitions asked the EPA to object to Clean Air Act permits issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which the plaintiffs claimed would cause significant harm to the environment.
The plaintiffs purported that these eight permits authorize the “operation of a major source of air pollution” in Texas. They asked the district court for an order requiring Wheeler to perform his duty to grant or deny the petitions before the end of March 2021. The eight permits are used by various companies for the Waha Gas Plant, Port Arthur Refinery, Sandy Creek Energy Station, Borger Refinery, Galena Park Facility, Oak Grove Steam Electric St
Environmental Integrity Project / Facebook
Several environmental groups are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to review and update its regulations governing industrial flares in a case that could have repercussions for Louisiana’s energy industry.
The complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, contends that the EPA has failed to update two groups of air pollution standards for such flares, which are mechanisms that destroy pollutants in waste gases, including compounds that result in smog, through combustion. Such flares are used in petrochemical facilities, gas-processing plants and large landfills.
The EPA has not updated some of the standards governing industrial flares for 34 years, according to the complaint. The agency is mandated by statute to review and update such regulations every eight years, the lawsuit states.