Washington DC – Today, Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Ralph Hall (R-TX) released the following statement after this morning’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling in EME Homer City Generation, L.P v. EPA on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule:
“I applaud this morning’s decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reject the EPA’s proposed Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, one of the Obama Administration’s many job-killing regulations partly responsible for the country’s current economic weakness.
The EPA’s arbitrary and rushed Rule threatened hundreds of good-paying jobs in my district, and would have resulted in higher costs and less reliable electricity throughout the country. It was based more on an ‘EPA-knows-best’ approach than objective science, and was flawed by unreasonable timelines, lack of state or industry consultation, black box models, insufficient cost-benefit analysis, unverifiable health claims, and an overreliance on computer models instead of actual pollution measurements.
The Court echoed concerns raised repeatedly by the Science, Space, and Technology Committee in hearings and letters in stating that the Cross-State Rule ‘stands on an unsound foundation,’ and that the Clean Air Act is ‘not a blank check for EPA’ to establish nonsensical and heavy-handed edicts on states like Texas.
EPA officials have stated they will be ‘very sensitive’ to stakeholders if forced to reassess this rule, and I hope they will live up to that promise. As I stated in October of last year when the Agency had to make hurried ‘technical adjustments’ to fix glaring problems in the rule’s allocations, EPA needs to step back and reconsider its approach. I look forward to questioning EPA further on this matter.”