Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is no shrinking violet. She is taking no prisoners in her position as governor.
Sanders filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to a petition first obtained by the Daily Caller.
This story goes back to 2015 when the EPA finalized a revised ozone standard requiring states to draft a state-specific implementation plan (SIP) to meet the requirements.
In the standard, there was a “Good Neighbor” provision that required states to implement controls to ensure they do not cause neighboring states to fail to meet air quality standards.
Then in 2019, Arkansas proposed a plan based on the best available data and consistent with EPA guidance that was issued under the Trump administration.
The state-specific implementation plan was designed to meet air quality standards in a manner appropriate for the industries present in a region.
But now, the EPA officially disapproved of Arkansas’s proposed SIP, claiming it fails to prevent air emissions in Arkansas from contributing to non-attainment in the Dallas/Ft. Worth and Houston metro areas.
The petition from Arkansas says that the EPA’s decision relied on data not available to Arkansas at the time of the SIP development. And it states that by allowing revisions to the SIP, the EPA chose to deny the plan outright and substitute its plan.
“During my inaugural address, I promised to stop the meddling hand of big government cold at the Mississippi. I’ve asked Attorney General Griffin to sue the EPA to get bureaucratic tyrants in Washington off Arkansans’ backs. Critical Arkansas industries – and more importantly, Arkansas workers and their families – stand to be affected by this federal overreach,” Sanders told the media.
“The Biden Administration is threatening dozens of Arkansas businesses and thousands of Arkansas jobs,” she added.
The moral of the story is, don’t mess with Sarah.
