Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announces legal challenge against EPA, cites ‘federal overreach’
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Thursday that her administration was mounting a legal challenge against a recent Environmental Protection Agency ruling.
Citing “federal overreach” and “Biden’s war on American industry,” Sanders said her administration would fight the recent EPA ruling requiring it to follow an agency-mandated plan instead of a plan Arkansas had submitted.
The governor explained that the issue is the state’s response to the EPA’s 2015 Ozone Air Quality Standards, which lowered allowable ozone levels. States were allowed to submit plans for how they would meet the reduced levels, which Arkansas did in 2019, she said.
The EPA recently rejected the Arkansas plan and required it and 24 other states to follow what she called a “one size fits all” plan the EPA generated, the governor explained. She went on to say the EPA claimed the state had “let polluters off the hook” in rejecting the plan.
Sanders repeatedly called the EPA plan overreaching. As an example of overreach, she said the EPA ruling would impact and possibly lead to the shutdown of the Arkansas Electric Cooperatives Harry L. Oswald Generating Station at Wrightsville, where she held the news conference.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, echoing Sanders’ claim of federal overreach, said the state was on “strong legal footing” in filing its challenge to the EPA ruling.
Griffin indicated that the Arkansas-submitted plan was rejected on Monday, Feb. 13.
The attorney general went on to say "the goalposts have been moved" by the EPA in rejecting the Arkansas plan and mandating the agency's own plan. The EPA used 2017 data from the upper midwest in creating the data for the 2015 changes but used data from the Dallas-Fort Worth metro in citing the need for Arkansas to follow the EPA-mandated plan, he said.
“The Biden administration has acted beyond its authority,” Griffin said.
The petition for review had been filed in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, the attorney general said.
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