AUSTIN (July 26, 2010)—Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a petition Monday with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reject the state’s 16-year-old air permitting program.

The EPA said the state's so-called flexible permit program, which set a general limit on the quantity of air pollutants an entire facility can release, violated the federal Clean Air Act, which requires state-issued permits to set limits on each of the dozens of individual production units inside a plant.

Abbott said the state’s approach gave facilities more flexibility and control while still resulting in reduced emissions that met all applicable state and federal requirements.

He said the EPA’s rejection of the program was a unilateral declaration that the program is not in compliance with federal law that threatens the jobs of thousands of Texans.

Gov. Rick Perry, who has called the rejection an overreach of authority, says the federal government is putting thousands of jobs at risk in Texas to “impose a system it says will be easier for Washington bureaucrats to understand.”

“The EPA’s overreach is as potentially devastating as it is unnecessary, as Texas has achieved greater improvements in air quality than the nation as a whole since 2000 through our use of incentives and innovation,” he said.