Although there is carbon burning in the air drifting to Missouri from Canada, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals granted Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s request for a pause on an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation meant to address air pollution.
“Clearly, we have a tendency to have all sorts of issues with pollution and either intentional or accidental events making it harder for us to breathe,” said James Owen, an attorney and executive director of Renew Missouri energy group.
The temporary stay prohibits the EPA from imposing the regulation while the appeal is resolved.
Also known as the good neighbor provision of the Clean Air Act, the EPA regulation would have required the state of Missouri and others to curtail air pollution from power plants and industrial facilities that float across state lines.
“What this decision is whether or not we are letting our pollution go to other states,” Owen told the St. Louis Record. “We have a lot of emissions in the state. Our utility companies still burn a lot of coal. We have factories that do that and they're under a lot of regulation to keep that to a minimum and it still happens.”
Bailey opposed the regulation because it will allegedly increase the price of energy for Missouri residents.
“The court has thankfully put on hold the attempt by Biden’s EPA to unlawfully expand the federal government’s authority, displace Missouri’s ability to set our own energy policy, and force Missouri consumers to pay higher prices,” Bailey said in a statement online. “We will always stand in the gap to protect Missourians against the federal government's unconstitutional overreach.”
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision on May 26 without an opinion. The order was signed by Judge Michael E. Gans.
"There's been a lot of challenges to the Clean Air Act, and there's been a lot of challenges to Congress's ability to regulate pollution," Owen added. "We saw that happen last year with Congress needing to be much more specific with their directions. We've got a lot of judges who are appointed by U.S. presidents who are more friendly to business than they are to the public."
Federal law requires that the EPA approve any state’s implementation plan that satisfies the Clean Air Act’s requirements. However, the state of Missouri's plan was labeled inadequate by the EPA, according to media reports.
However, Bailey alleges that Missouri's plan never had a chance to be approved.
"Missouri spent considerable time and resources to craft a plan that satisfied the Clean Air Act, only for the EPA to ignore its statutory duty," he said. "After the deadline for the EPA to approve Missouri’s plan had already expired, the EPA moved the goalposts and changed the standards to try to justify denying Missouri’s plan. Demonstrating it never actually intended to accept Missouri’s plan, the EPA refused to consider Missouri’s supplemental proposal and instead changed its standards again."