Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
7/11/2014
Nine states have joined a lawsuit filed by Murray Energy Corp. against the Environmental Protection Agency challenging the legality of the EPA’s recently proposed carbon dioxide emissions standards. The proposed regulations, developed under the Clean Air Act’s section 111(d), set emissions reductions goals for each state and require the states develop plans to meet those goals. The suit, though, charges that section 111(d) “grants EPA certain authority to require States to regulate existing-source emissions, but it specifically excludes the regulation of any air pollutant emitted from a source category that EPA already regulates under Section 112 of the Act.” The suit says that coal-fired power plants are already regulated under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act and that the EPA has argued that an error in the amendments to the Clean Air Act has created an ambiguity, allowing EPA to develop the regulations.
The states which have signed onto the lawsuit are, not surprisingly, largely states with a high reliance on coal for power generation. West Virginia, Alabama, Alaska, Kentucky, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming have joined the lawsuit which was initially filed by Ohio-based Murray Energy in mid-June. Lawsuits which deal with proposed, not finalized rules generally do not make it through the courts, a fact which Oklahoma Attorney General Patrick Morrisey acknowledged in a release concerning the lawsuit “While we recognize that courts typically decline to review rules that have been proposed but not yet finalized, this case is unique because EPA has proposed a rule that is so clearly illegal that even the agency itself admits that the rule violates the ‘literal’ terms of the Clean Air Act,” Morrisey said. “An agency should not be permitted to threaten to impose a rule that it knows will never survive judicial review, in order to scare regulated parties into closing their doors in anticipation of the rule being finalized. We will use every legal tool possible to stop this flagrant overreach by EPA in order to protect the hard working families of West Virginia.”
