Monday, July 03, 2017

Court Rejects Trump's Delay of EPA Drilling Pollution Rule

Oil Rig (Credit: © Getty Images) Click to Enlarge.
The Trump administration cannot delay an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule limiting methane pollution from oil and natural gas drilling, a federal court ruled Monday.

In an early court loss for President Trump’s aggressive agenda of environmental deregulation, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the EPA didn’t meet the requirements for a two-year stay of the Obama administration’s methane rule.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s decision to delay enforcement of the provisions was based on arguments that when the Obama administration wrote the rule, it violated procedures by not allowing stakeholders to comment on some parts of what became the final regulation.  The agency used that reasoning to formally reconsider the rule and to pause enforcement.
But the court said the argument doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

“The administrative record thus makes clear that industry groups had ample opportunity to comment on all four issues on which EPA granted reconsideration, and indeed, that in several instances the agency incorporated those comments directly into the final rule,” two of the judges on the three-judge panel wrote.

“Because it was thus not ‘impracticable’ for industry groups to have raised such objections during the notice and comment period [the Clean Air Act] did not require reconsideration and did not authorize the stay.”

Environmental groups led by the Environmental Defense Fund had sued the EPA after its delay, asking for quick, emergency action from the court on the matter.

Read more at Court Rejects Trump's Delay of EPA Drilling Pollution Rule

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