CPR Scholars Respond to Supreme Court Ruling in Favor of EPA's Cross-State Pollution Rule
The Supreme Court today upheld, by a 6-2 vote, the EPA's cross-state air pollution rule.
Below are reactions from Center for Progressive Reform scholars Thomas O. McGarity and Victor Flatt.
According to McGarity:
After two decade's worth of litigation, the Supreme Court has finally held that EPA may require polluters in one state to protect air quality in downwind states through a sensible combination of emissions thresholds, cost-effective pollution reduction technologies, and emissions trading.
While this is good news to residents of downwind states, they cannot yet breathe easy. Much time has passed since EPA promulgated the "cross-state" rule in 2011, and both EPA and the states must now make up for lost time in putting the rule's protective provisions into place.
To achieve a successful implementation, EPA must resist the inevitable demands for exceptions, exemptions, and time extensions from upwind states that have thus far successfully forestalled the Clean Air Act's "good neighbor" policy.
According to Flatt:
The majority got it exactly right in reversing the DC Circuit Court and upholding the EPA's painstakingly crafted cross state air pollution rule. The majority was correct that the formula promulgated by the EPA was well within …
In a very thoughtful CPRBlog piece, dated April 14, 2014, Rena Steinzor presents a powerful critique of the enforcement aspects of EPA’s 2014-2018 Strategic Plan. As Professor Steinzor rightly points out, EPA’s projected cutbacks in source inspections, civil judicial enforcement, administrative enforcement actions, and other enforcement work will likely encourage air and water pollution by small and medium-sized polluters that will have harmful effects on human health and the environment. At the same time, however, when one compares the final Strategic Plan’s enforcement components with the enforcement sections of the draft Strategic Plan that the Agency released for public comment last November, it becomes evident that the final Plan contains a modest silver lining in an ominous dark cloud.
The Agency’s initial draft Strategic Plan sought public comment on some proposals for changing the system by which EPA measures the success or failure …
Landowners flooded by the Missouri River in 2011 have sued the Corps of Engineers for a Fifth Amendment “taking” under the U.S. Constitution. Their attorneys hope to rake in over $250 million in claims for their clients and at least $1 million in expenses and fees for themselves. They’re likely to be disappointed.
Lawsuits seeking recovery of flood damages from the federal government almost always fail. First, the United States is immune from suit for negligent construction or handling of flood control structures under the sovereign immunity shield of the 1928 Flood Control Act, as plaintiffs whose lives were destroyed when levees failed during Hurricane Katrina quickly discovered. My co-author Christine Klein and I have called for a repeal of this provision in our article and book on Unnatural Disasters, but it hasn’t happened.
In hopes of avoiding the immunity problem, the Missouri River …
Since the year began, the Environmental Protection Agency has resolved enforcement actions against 12 different companies in the Chesapeake region for failure to comply with environmental laws. In one case, EPA found that the U.S. Army had failed to inspect more than a dozen underground tanks at one of its Virginia military bases containing hundreds of thousands of gallons of jet fuel, diesel fuel, and gasoline. A D.C. hospital was not properly checking for carbon monoxide leaks. A solvent processing facility in Cockeysville, Maryland, was storing industrial waste in a room with a leaky floor.
The Army paid $41,000; the hospital forked over $15,000; the solvent processing facility was out $80,650. Collectively, the 12 settlements amounted to nearly $325,000 in penalties. Compared with the $5.15 billion the Texas oil company Anadarko Petroleum Corp. agreed to pay this month for a …
Yesterday, The Hill published an opinion piece by CPR scholars Christine Klein and Sandra Zellmer.
According to the piece:
President Obama recently signed a controversial bill that will directly affect the safety of millions of Americans. The fine print is so complicated, though, that it’s hard to predict exactly how our safety will be affected.
Some say that the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2014 brings desperately needed relief to property owners who face ruinous increases in their premiums for federal flood insurance. To supporters like Senator Schumer (D-N.Y.), the law preserves the American dream of homeownership from ill-conceived intervention by “an irrational Washington force.”
Others see the new law as election-year pandering and a cowardly reversal of course. Just two years ago, Congress passed the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 in direct response to catastrophic damage from Superstorm Sandy. The 2012 …
I’ve been in Bangalore, India for about two months on a Fulbright fellowship to study Indian environmental law. While I knew India has major problems with air pollution and sanitation, I didn’t expect that one of the major environmental controversies here would be about greening the idol industry. Apparently, the gods in India can wreak havoc on the environment.
Each year, Indians sink millions of idols in rivers and lakes to celebrate various festivals. The biggest festival for idol sinking is Ganesh Chaturthi, held each August or September in honor of the elephant god Ganesh. Hindus sink Ganesh idols for a variety of reasons, including purifying the home, casting away misfortune, and returning the God to the earth.
The problem is that most of the idols are made of plaster of Paris and are decorated with brightly colored paints that contain dyes and heavy metals …
Rhode Island has recently learned that its renewable energy standards could be ruinously expensive. But they’re in good company: more than a dozen states have “learned” the same thing, from reports from the same economists at the Beacon Hill Institute (BHI).
Housed at Boston’s Suffolk University, BHI turns out study after study for right-wing, anti-government groups. Funding for BHI’s relentless efforts has come from Charles and David Koch (leading tea party funders) and others on the same wavelength. For the Rhode Island study, BHI teamed up with the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity, a member of the Koch’s State Policy Network.
While BHI’s name and location place it close to the Massachusetts state government, it is philosophically a different beacon on a different hill. Last year BHI requested a grant from the Searle Freedom Trust, aimed at undermining the Regional …
For years, Duke Energy has enjoyed virtual free rein to contaminate North Carolina’s surface and ground waters with arsenic, lead, selenium, and all of the other toxic ingredients in its coal ash waste in clear violation of the Clean Water Act and other federal environmental laws. And it seems that both North Carolina’s regulators and state legislators are determined to keep it that way.
Last year, the state’s environmental agency actively thwarted citizens’ efforts to sue Duke for violating the Clean Water Act by intervening in the lawsuit at the last minute and then settling with the company for just over $99,000—chump change for a company worth more than $50 billion—and no obligations to clean up their coal ash waste sites or prevent future pollution. As detailed previously on CPRBlog, the head of the state’s environmental department—appointed by Gov …
Basic disclosures of conflicts of interest have been required by the top science journals for decades. Yet most regulatory agencies – despite strong urging from a variety of bipartisan sources – have failed to require these disclosures for private research submitted to inform regulatory decisions. This omission is particularly alarming since, unlike journals, agencies used this research to determine the appropriate standards for protection of public health and welfare. If anything, one would expect the agencies to apply higher scientific standards and insist on greater transparency for privately submitted research as compared to journal editors.
The failure of agencies to meet these bare minimum standards of science has not gone unnoticed. Recently, the Administrative Conference of the U.S. recommended that agencies should, where possible, require these basic disclosures of conflicts, including “whether the experimenteror author had the legal right without approval of the sponsor of the research …
Maryland faces an important deadline in its long-running effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. By 2017, the state will be legally required to have put in place a number of specific measures to reduce the massive quantities of pollution that now flow into the Bay from a range of pollution sources in the state. Unfortunately, if the terms of a draft Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement are any indication, we’re going to miss the deadline.
Today, CPR President Rena Steinzor and I submitted comments to the Chesapeake Executive Council, a collaborative partnership of Bay state governors currently chaired by Gov. Martin O’Malley, arguing that the Agreement falls well short. As the first interstate agreement since EPA issued the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the Chesapeake Bay, the Agreement is an opportunity to build off the TMDL and tackle the issues that plan does not …
