Environmental groups seeking to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to update its oil and gas drilling waste disposal rules are asking the agency to exceed its legal authority and trample over state drilling waste regulations, a Texas oil and gas industry group told a D.C. federal judge Wednesday.
Groups including the Environmental Integrity Project and Natural Resources Defense Council sued the EPA in May, claiming the agency hasn't revised its regulations for waste materials from oil and gas production since 1988, despite being required under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to review and, if necessary, revise the regulations every three years...
"The Texas program has been approved by the EPA 17 times - an average of once every two years," Haynes and Boone LLP Partner Suzanne Murray, who represents TIPRO, said in a statement Thursday. "The relief being sought here goes beyond the authority that Congress granted the EPA under [RCRA] Subtitle D, so the court cannot order to it to act the way that the plaintiffs are requesting."
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