Court smacks down EPA-sanctioned pollution
In 1990, Congress passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act which ordered a state to set more stringent limits on air pollution if that state determined that the Clean Air Act was insufficient inside its borders. The monitoring requirements and sufficiency determination were not optional; states were required to make this determination.
In 2006, the Bush administration issued a rule that instructed the EPA to prohibit states from complying with this part of the law (keep in mind that this change was an administrative rule, and not a law passed by Congress). Of course, it's no surprise that the pollution-friendly Bush White House would take such action. We've seen that M.O. countless times from the cabal at 1600 Pennsylvania throughout the eight long, dark winters of the Bush presidency: if they don't like a law, they just ignore it.
Today, the generally conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the EPA must follow the 1990 amendment to the Clean Air Act, negating the Bush gang's flouting of the law:
Environmental groups challenged the agency, saying that the new rule kept public agencies from gathering and making available the best data about industrial contributions to air pollution.
"E.P.A.’s about-face means that some permit programs do not comply" with federal law, Judge Thomas B. Griffith wrote in the majority opinion. He added that thousands of permits allowing the operation of industrial facilities might not comply with the law "because their monitoring requirements are invalid."
Judge David B. Sentelle joined Judge Griffith’s opinion.
The ruling by the court, which has jurisdiction over most federal agency rules, was another judicial rebuke to the E.P.A.’s recent policies, leaving few of its major initiatives on air pollution intact.
Although the criminal gang in charge of the Executive Branch can still do a lot of damage in its remaining five months, the tapestry is beginning to unravel, one malignant thread at a time.