Texas court blocks Houston from using tougher clean-air laws
Source: Associated Press
Texas court blocks Houston from using tougher clean-air laws
Juan A. Lozano, Associated Press
Updated 6:27 pm, Friday, April 29, 2016
HOUSTON (AP) — Houston's efforts to use local clean air laws to regulate pollution in the home of the nation's largest petrochemical complex were halted Friday by a Texas Supreme Court ruling in favor of energy and chemical companies that claimed the city had overreached.
The coalition made up of ExxonMobil Corp. and other companies with nearby refineries and plants had sued the nation's fourth-largest city in 2008 after Houston passed ordinances that required businesses to pay registration fees based on the number and type of pollution sources on each site. The city used the fees to investigate potential violations of air pollution laws.
The ordinances also made it unlawful to operate a facility inside Houston unless it was registered with the city. Violations of the ordinances could have been prosecuted in municipal court and were punishable with fines between $250 and $2,000 per day.
Attorneys for the city had argued in court documents the ordinances were a local expression of state laws regulating pollution, that they didn't make an "end-run" around state regulations and the lawsuit was hiding the real issue, "which is that industry does not want to be accountable to the people to stay within industry's permitted levels of pollution."
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/Texas-court-blocks-Houston-from-using-tougher-7383598.php
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Who do they think they are? 
That's all. 
