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A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld an EPA ruling against Texas in a legal fight in which Texas denied its emissions significantly contributed to ozone pollution in downwind states.
The fight started in 2012 when Texas submitted what is known as a State Implementation Plan with the Environmental Protection Agency and asserted no additional mitigation was necessary.
As the Fifth Circuit Court, in a recent ruling explained, the SIP included charts of declining ozone levels in certain metropolitan areas, a brief discussion of wind patterns, a map of 2010 ozone levels, and some raw measurement data, but did not analyze or quantify Texas’s impact on other states’ air quality. Texas’s submission focused on areas geographically close to Texas and did not address whether its emissions might interfere with maintenance of air quality standards in other states.
The EPA then determined that Texas emissions “contributed to downwind ozine problems” but Texas did not correct its SIP. So in 2016, the EPA formally disapproved the SIP “finding it failed to address statutory requirements, particularly by not evaluating impacts on maintenance areas and by relying on outdated control measures. Texas and industry groups petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for review, arguing EPA’s process was procedurally and substantively flawed.”
The Federal Appeals Court denied the petition and held that EPA’s review complied with statutory and procedural requirements and the agency acted within its authority in disapproving the SIP.
In June, Oklahoma won a U.S.Supreme Court ruling which overturned a Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in the state’s challenge of the EPA’s rejection of the “Good Neighbor” plan intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants. The justices said the Denver federal appeals court was wrong to refer Oklahoma’s challenge to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, a decision that prompted the state’s challenge in March 2023.
