By Susan A. Baird
PBN Web Editor
WASHINGTON – Rhode Island and Massachusetts have joined a new multistate lawsuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to regulate oil-refinery emissions.
Plaintiffs in the case – filed yesterday in the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by N.Y. Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo – include 12 states, the District of Columbia and the City of New York. They assert that, by failing to set limits on refineries’ emissions of greenhouse gases, the EPA is violating the federal Clean Air Act.
“Once again, the states are being forced to sue the federal government for its failure to live up to its statutory responsibilities to address global climate change,” Mass. Attorney General Martha Coakley said in a statement last night.
The Clean Air Act specifically requires that the EPA establish New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) “for oil refineries, as well as power plants and other major stationary sources, if the EPA determines they emit air pollution that poses a danger to public health and welfare,” her office noted.
Yet when the agency finalized new air-pollution regulations for oil refineries on June 24, it did so without setting standards for pollutants linked to global climate change. That was, Cuomo said, “the latest example of the Bush administration’s do-nothing policy on global warming.”
Oil refineries are major sources of global-warming pollutants, the plaintiffs say. U.S. refineries – energy-intensive facilities that account for more than 3 percent of the nation’s energy consumption – are responsible for nearly 15 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions nationwide. “These refineries also emit large amounts of methane, an especially potent global warming pollutant,” Coakley’s office said.
Besides Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York, the other states that brought the complaint are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. The roster is similar to those of past lawsuits seeking to require the EPA to set standards for air pollution from power plants (READ MORE) or allow states to regulate automotive greenhouse emissions (READ MORE).
The new lawsuit asks the court to order the EPA to adopt standards for oil-refinery emissions of greenhouse gases and vacate the agency’s decision to not regulate such emissions.
The action was criticized in a statement by EPA spokesman Tim Lyons.
“Time and taxpayer dollars will be better spent encouraging the Democratic-led Congress to take action on sound, responsible environmental legislation than by introducing new lawsuits,” Lyons said, according to Bloomberg News. The agency will “review this petition and respond appropriately.”
Coakley countered that, “while it is too late to force the current administration to start to take action, we are bringing this case because it raises an important point of law that could outlive this administration.”
Additional information is available from the office of N.Y. Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, at www.oag.state.ny.us; the Mass. Office of the Attorney General, at www.riag.mass.gov; and the R.I. Office of the Attorney General, at www.riag.ri.gov. For news and information from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, visit www.epa.gov.
