A Richland, Wash., resident has voluntarily withdrawn a lawsuit demanding that now-former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy issue or deny the Hanford Site air operating permit required under the federal Clean Air Act.
Attorneys for Bill Green filed the notice of voluntary dismissal on Dec. 14 in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. Judge Salvador Mendoza issued the dismissal order the next day. The case was closed without prejudice, meaning Green could file suit again at a later date.
The dismissal request provided no explanation for the decision. Green’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment on this week. There was also no immediate comment from the Department of Justice, which represented McCarthy in the lawsuit.
McCarthy left office on Jan. 20, when Donald Trump became president. The new administration’s nominee to head the EPA, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, is awaiting Senate confirmation after the upper chamber’s Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday shrugged off a Democratic boycott to vote in his favor.
Under Title V of the Clean Air Act, the EPA oversees state and local operating permits applied to significant stationary sources and other points of origin of air pollution, including the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, home to a massive cleanup of former plutonium production operations. The permit must encompass emissions restrictions, monitoring rules, and other measures to ensure the covered site complies with the Clean Air Act.
In the lawsuit filed in September, Green asserted the EPA was required to address the Washington state Department of Ecology’s failure to meet a 2015 air permit deadline.
Green had in 2013 and 2014 petitioned the EPA to object to the latest renewal of the state air operating permit for Hanford. In May 2015, McCarthy acceded to a single subpart of one of Green’s six claims, saying the Department of Ecology had not sufficiently addressed certain comments made during the public comment permit for the permit renewal – specifically regarding federal standards for radionuclides. The EPA ordered the Washington Department of Ecology to address the comments and update the permit as necessary afterward.
In his lawsuit, Green said the state missed the 90-day deadline to carry out the EPA directive, instead in July 2016 re-releasing the revised permit and responses to address the public comment problem.
The Department of Justice, in a Nov. 22 dismissal motion, argued that Green had no standing to file suit against the EPA. “[G]iven that Plaintiff has not disputed that Ecology’s revised permit meets EPA’s objection, Plaintiff lacks standing and cannot show that EPA has an obligation to issue or deny the permit under Section 7661d(c)” of the U.S. Code.
