EPA has agreed to a new haze reduction plan for Texas that will not require any fresh pollution cuts from the state’s outsize fleet of coal-fired power plants.
In the plan, Texas “determined that no additional controls for stationary sources were necessary to make reasonable progress” toward the regional haze program’s goal of restoring unclouded vistas in national parks and wilderness areas by 2064, EPA said in a signoff published in Friday’s Federal Register.
The newly approved plan succeeds a much more aggressive 2016 blueprint that EPA had to scrap last year after losing records needed to defend it in court against lawsuits brought by power companies and the state who had attacked that earlier plan as too costly.
The new plan also incorporates a weaker yardstick adopted by President Donald Trump’s administration for determining more generally whether states are making reasonable progress toward the 2064 target.
