The EPA has decided to continue violating the Clean Air Act.
The Hill reports:
The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t plan — at least for now — to expand greenhouse gas permitting requirements beyond major industrial polluters like power plants, refineries and other big industrial sites.
“We have found that the capabilities of the state permitting authorities have not improved to the extent necessary for additional sources to be brought into the system,” the agency states in a proposal that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson signed on Friday.
The plan — posted on EPA’s website Friday — comes just days before Jackson heads to Capitol Hill to defend the agency’s budget request…
This plan is illegal as the Clean Air Act says that if EPA decides to regulates greenhouse gases as a criteria air pollutant, it must regulate all sources that emit 100 tons or more. EPA has decided on its own — without the law being changed by Congress — that it won’t regulate sources that emit less than 75,000/100,000 tons.
Called the tailoring rule, EPA’s purpose is to avoid writing permits for the 6+ million sources of CO2 that emit more than 100 tons per year. EPA estimates that such a process would take three years and cost $63 billion.