‘Shameless Surrender to Polluters’: EPA Proposes Rule Change Threatening Texans’ Air Quality
New rule would allow TCEQ to eliminate public notice and participation in permitting for many polluters, including concrete batch plants and data centers
AUSTIN, Texas — A proposed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule revision and deletion would hand extraordinary power to state regulators like the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to eliminate public notice and block the public from objecting to certain polluting facilities operating in their community.
The proposed change is for so-called “minor” source air permits. Despite the term, these permits can have a major impact on a community’s quality of life. Those permits are issued to facilities such as concrete batch plants and rock crushers that emit harmful particulate matter, as well as to gas plants that supply power to AI data centers.
The proposal explains EPA’s support for the belief that “overwhelming the public with inconsequential information about minimal-impact minor sources” actually discourages public participation in the air permits program and that the rule will help state governments facing budget shortfalls because it considers public participation an “ineffective use of limited resources.”
“The TCEQ consistently demonstrates its inability to consider the needs of communities across Texas and works to limit public transparency and opportunities for meaningful public input,” said Kathryn Guerra, director of Public Citizen’s TCEQ Watchdog Campaign. “Public participation is one of the few tools everyday Texans have to defend themselves, and once it goes, the TCEQ won’t even have to bother with performative, bare-minimum efforts to include the public. It transforms the ‘reluctant regulator’ into an indifferent regulator. Every resident of this state should be worried about this shameless surrender to polluters.”
Texans have long known TCEQ as an industry-friendly regulator whose broken public participation processes earned admonishment from the Sunset Advisory Commission and necessitated new legislation mandating an overhaul in 2023, culminating in TCEQ rulemaking in 2025. That rulemaking process was also subject to public participation, which TCEQ wholly rejected in favor of incorporating comments from industry interests. Concrete batch plants have also often been a focus of Texas legislators, who seek to mitigate the harmful impact of the high volume of plants on communities.
Already, under current TCEQ air permit rules, the majority of public participation is dismissed in favor of polluters. Given its current approach and its long-documented history of ignoring community concerns in favor of corporations, advocates worry that the TCEQ will fully embrace the rule. Air quality in some parts of Texas has failed to meet federal standards for more than a decade, and the EPA has repeatedly intervened in the state’s air quality planning.
The proposal was published on the EPA’s website overnight on July 2, as Texas and the rest of the country prepared to celebrate the Independence Day holiday weekend.
The proposed rule opens a 45-day comment period, which closes on Friday, August 21. Public Citizen requested a virtual public hearing, which EPA granted. It will be held on July 22 from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. CDT.
Public Citizen and allied organizations in Texas are mobilizing a response to the new rule to block it from taking effect.