Tag Archives: “State Implementation Plan”

Earlier this week, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated EPA’s disapproval of Wyoming’s regional haze plan for the PacifiCorp’s Wyodak power plant.  The basis for the disapproval was an issue near and dear to my heart.  In rejecting Wyoming’s SIP, EPA repeatedly pointed to Wyoming’s failure to comply with EPA’s guidelines for determining Best Available Retrofit Technology, even though the guidelines were not enforceable regulations. … More

Last week, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals vacated EPA’s approval of Pennsylvania’s SIP for attaining the 2008 NAAQS for NOx.  Specifically, the Court found that EPA’s approval was arbitrary and capricious with respect to three separate, but related, provisions of the SIP.  The flawed provisions were:

• The NOx standard for power plants utilizing selective catalytic reduction was set at 0.12 pounds/MMBtu.…

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Earlier this week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected challenges to the Federal Implementation Plan EPA promulgated after finding that Arizona’s regional haze State Implementation Plan was inadequate.  I think that the result is both correct and unsurprising.

However, one part of the opinion – a recitation of black-letter law – caught my eye.  In discussing the standard of review, the court noted that the arbitrary and capricious standard is “highly deferential.”  No surprise there. … More

Earlier this week, the 9th Circuit denied Arizona’s challenge to EPA’s decision to reject Arizona’s SIP addressing regional haze requirements and instead promulgate its own federal implementation plan.  The decision has a number of interesting elements and is well worth a read, but it’s most notable for its treatment of the deference issue.

We all know that courts defer to reasonable agency decision-making. … More