Court Denies Extension of National Parks Air Pollution Deadline

The EPA has a week to finalize a plan on improving visibility in Texas national parks, forcing Administrator Scott Pruitt to act on a rule much sooner than he would have wanted.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Aug. 31 denied the agency’s request to extend a deadline from Sept. 9, 2017, to Dec. 31, 2018, to issue a regional haze plan for Texas.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the Environmental Protection Agency failed to show the court that compliance with the deadline would be “more onerous” or that the settlement reached with environmental ...