Two governors and seventeen state attorneys general on Tuesday called for an end to what they called the EPA’s “overreach” and unlawful regulatory actions under the Obama administration.
“From our perspective, the recent overreach by the Agency amounts to a striking departure from the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts,” the state leaders wrote in their letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
“Respectfully, we ask that you consider the steps that the Agency may take to restore the principles of cooperative federalism embodied in these important statutes,” the letter states.
In the letter to Pruitt, the state leaders wrote, “the extensive regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency during the last decade is directly at odds with the express terms and structure of the Clean Air Act and Clear Water Act.”
Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin and Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed the letter, in addition to attorneys general from Texas, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming.
“For the last eight years, politics, not law, drove the shape and character of this country’s environmental regulations,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a prepared statement.
“The EPA now has the opportunity to correct that error under the leadership of Administrator Pruitt. We therefore invite the agency to turn away from its recent practices and bring its rule-making back into compliance with the very statutes from which it derives its authority,” said Paxton.
Paxton also said the EPA should respect the role that the statutes clearly express. “The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act expressly affirm that the states have the primary responsibility to care for the environment. It is about time the EPA respected that role,” he said.