Court Reminds EPA That We Have Laws and the Agency Must Follow Them
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided on Tuesday in Sierra Club v. EPA to throw out a rule that prevented states from implementing their own pollution-limiting permits. This marks marks yet another instance of a U.S. court overturning a Bush administration Environmental Protection Agency air quality rule on the grounds that it did not actually protect air quality.
This time the court ruled against the EPA because their actions directly violated the stipulations of the Clean Air Act. As John Walke at NRDC’s Switchboard points out, it’s interesting that the Bush administration would have dared to take away the power of the states to regulate their own pollution levels, given the precision of the language in the Clean Air Act:
No grants shall be made under this section until the Administrator has consulted with the appropriate official as designated by the Governor or Governors of the State or States affected… Not later than 3 years after the date of the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Governor of each State shall develop and submit to the Administrator a permit program under State or local law or under an interstate compact meeting the requirements of this title.
The rule that was just overturned prevented states from doing exactly this, which crippled the states’ ability to regulate themselves, and increased the power of the industries that profit from a lack of regulations. Walke quotes some juridical advice from the ruling: “(1) Read the statute; (2) read the statute; (3) read the statute.” Among the industry groups that supported the EPA’s case against state-level regulatory action was the American Petroleum Institute.
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