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THREAD 5: HON RULE PENDING TAKEDOWN Of all 2024 actions to tighten Clean Air Act, arguably most important was the HON rule, covering giant chemical plants like Indorama Port Neches. When these plants have leaks, they are massive in scale. Consider this 2022 incident at Indorama: 152 hours

Early 2025, Szabo & Tardif, both former petrochemical lobbyists, got appointed to oversee the EPA Office of Air and Radiation. Agency staff then started an effort to roll back the HON rule. First, meetings with chemical industry bosses to figure out a plan. See link static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics...

The industry lobbyists and lawyers were very explict in their requests. They gave the agency a detailed list of parts of the chemical plant HON rule they wanted gone. Here are those documents. static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics...

I found no records of similar meetings with enviornmental or public health groups during Trump's second term. No documents to share on that. Sorry folks. Let me know if you find them.

The EPA staff spent months soliciting input from the chemical industry. We have all these records. Pulled them. Then the staff presented Szabo and Tardif with some options. VERY, VERY important meeting. DECISIONAL BRIEFING they call it. Meeting was Aug. 13 2026. We got those records too.

CRITICAL PUBLIC HEALTH MOMENT HERE. Huge implications, for years. How much will rules be watered down???? EPA staff warned Szabo that he should keep the requirement for fenceline monitoring at chemical plants Eliminating it would be hard to defend in court.

Fenceline monitoring at oil refineries adopted a decade ago had been an enormous public health success. The EPA in 2024 had moved to extend this fenceline monitoring to chemical plants. awsedap.epa.gov/public/exten...