"EPA voids air-quality permits for Texas firms" by Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press | July 1, 2010
HOUSTON — The US Environmental Protection Agency yesterday officially overturned a 16-year-old Texas air permitting program it says violates the Clean Air Act, leaving some of the country’s largest refineries in a state of limbo.
The move comes after years of backdoor bickering, negotiations, and public arguments between the EPA and Texas. The argument recently escalated from a battle over environmental issues into a heated political dispute over states’ rights....
The EPA’s decision, announced in a statement, will force some 125 refineries and petrochemical plants to invest millions of dollars to get new permits. Many of the plants may also have to invest in updates to comply with federal regulations.
The decision did not come as a surprise to Texas or the industries. Al Armendariz, EPA regional director, has said for months he would disapprove the permits....
Texas can challenge the ruling in court.
Where everything in AmeriKa ends up.
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EPA Scraps Texas Clean Air Program, Will Make Oil Refineries To File For New Permits
Top 20 Photos From the Gulf that Obama Doesn’t Want You to See
Obama Is Deliberately Protracting Gulf Oil Disaster
Obama Wants The Oil Spill Crisis To Get Worse
Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling
For Brazil?
So what are you going to do without any oil, America?
"Obama tightens limits on emissions in East; EPA targets coal-burning plant pollution" by Matthew Daly, Associated Press | July 7, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is tightening restrictions on pollution from coal-burning power plants in the eastern half of the country, a key step to cut emissions that cause smog....
Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator, said the rule signed yesterday should improve air quality and public health in a broad swath of states, from New England down to Florida, over to Texas, and up to Minnesota....
The proposed reductions should save more than $120 billion a year in avoided health costs and sick days and save thousands of lives each year, Jackson said.
How can they possibly know that?
Just more bullshit for the agenda-pushing fire, huh?
Those benefits would far outweigh the estimated $2.8 billion annual cost of compliance, she said.
Up go your utility rates, America -- when you can least afford it!
Environmental groups hailed the tougher rules as a step toward taming pollution from coal-fired power plants and solving the problem of one state’s emissions harming residents in other states.
But industry groups said it will boost power prices and force many older coal-fired power plants to be closed.
Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, said the new rules will clean the air in Delaware and other Eastern states.
“As those of us who live in Delaware and other so-called tail pipe states on the East Coast know all too well, air pollution knows no boundaries,’’ Carper said.
Even as Delaware has worked to clean its air, “pollution from neighboring states has adversely affected the health of Delawareans for too long just by virtue of our location,’’ he said.
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Now, all of a sudden, you guys care?
"President Pussy has gone stark raving certifiably mad! Obama unleashed the worst environmental disaster in history by handing out EPA exemptions to British Petroleum like candy while the MMS did drugs and surfed internet porn, and now Obama is going to have the EPA drop an existing agreement to force Texas oil refineries to halt operations while they refile their paperwork, effectively shutting down a major portion of the United States' oil supply at a time when the flow of oil from the Gulf drilling operations is already limited to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Is Obama paying back BP for all their campaign money by slamming the US oil producers to "level the playing field", or is Obama playing a mafia-like racket in which he will shut off the flow of oil until Congress gives him his carbon-tax?
Either way, this is a reminder that the Founding Fathers were correct in warning against allowing the President to acquire too much direct authority over our lives." -- Wake the Flock Up