“The Environmental Protection Agency, under pressure from some states, industry and Congress, is expected to ease an air quality rule that would require power plants in 27 states to slash emissions,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
The EPA, which made the rule final in July, plans to propose as early as this week to allow certain states and companies to emit more pollutants than it previously permitted, [sources] said. The states and companies affected couldn’t be learned.
If true, this ought to be viewed as a classic move on EPA’s part to divide-and-conquer the opponents of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.
The beneficiaries of the move will gladly take advantage of it, leaving the omitted parties in a politically weakened state. The only winner in the end will be the EPA.
EPA is an agency with the power to do whatever it wants — and that unconstrained power is way too much for any agency.
The EPA is carefully infiltrated by obnoxious, anti-American, and anti-free enterprise, non scholarly partisans, just as we are at the near end of a hard but successful 40 year cleanup effort, in America. Our Air and Waters are now nearing cleaning. Furthermore, they have infiltrated the Civil Service so they can’t be dismissed in an administration turnover.
But the Civil Service laws protect these people from dismissal except in one circumstance. A Reduction-in-Force. or layoff. Then seniority rules apply. Recent plants will lose their sinecures if the budget is enormously slashed and a RIFF occurs. Last-in, first-out., is the rule. The only caution should be a requirements that the RIFF apply to the senior positions rather than the janitors.
Don’t worry too much. At this point, nothing could mollify Texas. Industry is up in arms, and the TCEQ is upset about the accusation that they didn’t do their jobs. Even the lay-people are wondering what the heck the EPA’s doing, and while most question Luminant’s motives, none are believing the EPA.