Promising to thwart the Biden administration from “abusing their regulatory powers,” Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday her state is suing the Environmental Protection Agency after it rejected a plan to comply with revised ozone regulations.
“During my inaugural address, I promised to stop the meddling hand of big government,” Sanders said during a news conference at the Oswald Generating Station in Little Rock. “Today, I’m announcing that I have asked Attorney General [Tim] Griffin to sue the EPA to get the overregulating, micromanaging bureaucratic tyrants in Washington off of Arkansans’ backs.”
In 2015, the EPA revised federal ozone national ambient air quality standards, where states must take measures to prevent significant emissions from affecting downwind states. The EPA then allowed states to come up with their own standard implementation plan and submit them to the EPA for approval.
Sanders said Arkansas submitted its plan in 2019, under GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson, based on the best available data and consistent with EPA guidance. But it was rejected Monday by the agency, which wants Arkansas and 25 other states to implement its own plan.
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