EPA goes to industry to fix faulty Texas permits

EPA offers to work with industry to fix faulty Texas air permits

HOUSTON (AP) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offered on Thursday to work directly with Texas' petrochemical industry in an effort to fix permits it says have long violated the Clean Air Act.

The EPA's offer is the latest in a drawn-out, public and politicized battle between the federal agency and Texas. The dispute evolved last month from a debate over pollution permitting into a pitched battle over states' rights, reaching the tipping point when the EPA threatened to remove Texas' permitting authority -- a role traditionally filled by states.

The EPA made public on Thursday a proposed voluntary program that would allow the nation's largest refineries to hire independent auditors to correct the problem permits while guaranteeing them legal forgiveness should violations be found. The auditors would determine what the required emission limits should be in each unit of a facility. After the EPA approved the findings, Texas would be asked to include the limits in air and operating permits. A 10-day public comment period on the program began Thursday.

While the program aims to correct a complicated problem by allowing industry to work directly with the EPA, the program gives Texas a rubber stamp status, with the state simply approving requirements after they receive a federal nod.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality indicated it was not satisfied with the proposal.

"While we support innovative approaches, we do have concerns with the efficiency of the audit concept and how it would overlap the state's permitting processes," the state agency said in a statement, but declined to comment further.

Al Armendariz, the EPA's regional director, said the EPA discussed the program with state officials before going public. He said the concept was also intensively discussed with some of the country's largest petrochemical companies, who "don't like the uncertainty" of operating with permits the EPA believes violate federal law.

"We are going to work with industry to identify what the legally appropriate requirements should be and should have been all along," Armendariz said.

The EPA, he added, would welcome Texas' input in the program, including in reviewing the audits.

The crux of the debate is over Texas' so-called flexible permits, which set a general limit on how much pollutant an entire facility can release. The federal Clean Air Act requires state-issued permits to set limits on each of the dozens of individual production units inside a plant. The EPA says Texas' system masks pollution and makes it impossible to regulate emissions and protect public health.

In meetings and telephone calls held in the last two weeks, it appeared Texas was finally moving to bring its program in line with federal regulation, Armendariz said.

Still, the EPA will likely officially disapprove the state's flexible permit program at the end of this month, and could still strip its permitting authority completely if it fails to comply with the Clean Air Act.

"To date, I still have not seen a single permit which addresses the major grounds for our objections," Armendariz said. "The final proof that the state of Texas is serious is when the state issues permits that are consisted with the Clean Air Act and they haven't done so yet."