What's that smell? Part 2

EPA rules Texas has to follow the same rules as everyone else when it comes to air quality.  Rick Perry and John Cornyn are pissed.  Pissed that their state has to follow the rules in order to protect their residents?  Isn't that what they are suppose to do?

Read about it in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

In a much anticipated decision, the Environmental Protection Agency's Dallas regional office announced that it has rejected a clean-air implementation plan by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, ruling that the state's flexible permitting system violates portions of the U.S. Clean Air Act and effectively relaxes federally mandated emissions requirements.

EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz defended the decision, saying his primary focus will be to bring the plants into federal compliance rather than engage in "a back and forth with elected officials" in Texas. The action, he said, "improves our ability to provide the citizens of Texas with the same healthy-air protections that are provided for citizens in all other states under the Clean Air Act."

"Texans deserve the same clean air protection as citizens of every other state, and TCEQ's flexible permitting program has been denying all of us that right for nearly 20 years," said Luke Metzger of Environment Texas. "The Clean Air Act is the same law that polluters in all other 49 states have to follow, and it's time that polluters in Texas follow it, too."