Court nixes regulations targeting interstate air pollution
A federal appeals court today overturned a regulation aimed at limiting pollution from coal-fired power plants and other large sources in 28 states, including Missouri and Illinois.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington sided with a group of utilities, mining companies and states that challenged the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency last summer.
The three-member panel ruled 2-1 that the EPA overstepped its legal authority when it issued the rule meant to clamp down on pollution carried across state lines by the wind and hurts air quality in downwind states.
The court ordered the EPA to instead enforce regulations issued in 2005 until there’s a valid replacement.
The ruling is another setback for the Obama administration and environmental groups seeking to limit emissions from coal-fired power plants and other major stationary sources of air pollution.
The rule overturned today specifically would have sharply reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain and soot, and nitrogen oxide, which contributes to ground-level ozone and smog.
The EPA issued the rule last August, and the first of two phases was supposed to take effect this year. But it was stayed by the court in December pending a legal review.
The court’s 60-page ruling concluded that the rule would have imposed “massive emissions reduction requirements on upwind states without regard to the limits imposed by the statutory text.”
St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp., the nation’s largest coal producer, was among the groups that challenged the EPA rule last fall.
“This ruling is an appropriate reversal of regulatory overreach by the EPA, which we’ve seen on a number of fronts,” Vic Svec, a Peabody senior vice president, said in an emailed statement.
Meanwhile, emissions from coal-fired plants are declining because of technology investments made by utilities, he said.
But advocates for the rule called the ruling a huge setback for the environment and public health.
“Not only will residents of those states whose coal plants are emitting highly dangerous sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter suffer greatly from today’s court ruling, but residents of states downwind from these sources will continue to be exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution,” David Marshall, senior counsel for the Clean Air Task Force, said in a statement.
Judge Judith Rogers also disagreed with the majority’s decision, writing in a 44-page dissent: “The court ignores Congress’s limitations on the court’s jurisdiction and decades of precedent strictly enforcing those limitations and proceeds to do violence to the plain text of the (Clean Air Act).”
-Jeffrey Tomich
