Today environmentalists got some good news from a Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, which ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency broke the law by allowing utilities to install new equipment without installing new pollution control equipment at the same time, a clear violation of the Clean Air Act. (The change had been stayed since fifteen states, including California and New York, and numerous environmental organizations, sued in 2003.)
The three-judge ruling was unanimous and was written by Janice Rogers Brown, a conservative judge appointed to the panel by the current president.
In truth, it was a "no-brainer," as they say in Hollywood, because the EPA tried to rewrite the English language to claim that "any" physical modification meant something other than the obvious. To wit:
…there is no reason the usual
tools of statutory construction should not apply and hence no
reason why “any” should not mean “any.” Indeed, EPA’s
interpretation would produce a “strange,” if not an
“indeterminate,” result: a law intended to limit increases in air
pollution would allow sources operating below applicable
emission limits to increase significantly the pollution they emit
without government review.
In its ruling, the appeals court literally suggested that the EPA look at Webster’s Dictionary. Industry spokespeople complained this upholding of the law would make things worse by delaying upgrading of old plants. Of course, there is another possibility, which is that utilities might actually make improvements in efficiency or pollution control, or even consider building newer, cleaner power plants to replace dirty old coal plants. Can we imagine change and improvement?
Another right-wing attempt to roll back environmental protection fell down this week when a non-partisan panel or experts appointed by the National Academy of Sciences ruled that California had every right to set higher air pollution standards than the Federal government, if it wished, and pointed out that those higher standards have been highly effective at reducing pollution.
"We’re very pleased," California Air Resources Board spokesman Jerry Martin [told the LATimes]. "Clearly the report justifies our position that we need to have separate standards. Air pollution rates in California in general have plummeted in the last 30 years or so, and that’s largely due to California’s unique emission standards for … all engines that we are allowed to regulate…. Anything we can regulate, we have."
Kit Stolz 