May 31, 2024 |
Photo – Governor Mark Gordon – Bigfoot99 file photo
Governor Mark Gordon has filed an additional lawsuit challenging a new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency that targets the coal industry in Wyoming and other states.
With the lawsuit, Wyoming joins West Virginia, Georgia and 19 other states challenging EPA’s new steam electric power generating effluent guidelines. The rule was part of a package of rules released in late April that target power plants. The new EPA rule requires, according to the lawsuit filed by the states, costly and infeasible technologies that are designed to force the early retirement of traditional electric power plants.
The lawsuit contends that EPA’s rule does not reflect any genuine science in protecting human health and the environment. Wyoming’s lawsuit argues that the final rule exceeds EPA’s statutory authority and is arbitrary in nature, capricious, and is an abuse of discretion, not in accordance with law.
In a statement accompanying Thursday’s announcement regarding the lawsuit, Governor Gordon said, “Yet again we are compelled to challenge the unlawful and ill-conceived rulemaking of the Biden Administration’s EPA to defend the interests of our core industries, including coal, as well as protect consumers from burdensome regulations that increase energy costs and threaten our nation’s energy supply, while doing little or nothing for the environment.”
The states argue in their petition to 11th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court for Georgia, Alabama and Florida, that the final rule exceeds the EPA’s statutory authority and is outside the law. The 22 participating states ask that the court declare the EPA’s decision unlawful and to vacate it.
Wyoming is funding its participation with tax money funded through a bill passed by the Legislature and signed by Governor Gordon in 2021. House Bill 207 created the coal-fired facility closures litigation funding account to fight the Biden Administration on anti-coal mandates.
