Early last year, EPA trumpeted an upcoming crackdown on Texas coal-fired power plants predicted to slash tens of thousands of tons of dangerous sulfur dioxide emissions.
Eighteen months later, the future of that plan for cutting haze in national parks is also clouded. The reason, according to interviews and a recent court filing, is that EPA has lost critical supporting records.
Last month, EPA lawyers took the extraordinary step of asking the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to scrap a 2016 haze cleanup rule that the agency had spent the past eight years seeking to preserve.
Confidential business information collected from power plant owners had been transferred to an external storage device and could no longer be found, David Garcia, air division chief for EPA’s Dallas-based Region 6 office, wrote in an accompanying declaration.
