Pa. pulls out of 5 pollution suits
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Pennsylvania has withdrawn from five federal environmental lawsuits in which the Rendell administration had intervened in support of health protective regulations of greenhouse gas emissions and ground-level ozone, the primary component of smog.
The state's decision to end its participation in the federal cases again has raised concerns from local, state and national environmental organizations that Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's administration is charting a different course on regulation of fossil fuel energy and its air pollution emissions than did the previous Democratic administration.
According to federal court records, the state Aug. 5 withdrew from four cases it joined in 2010 in support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "endangerment" rule. That ruling found that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollutants that contribute to climate change also jeopardize human health and should be regulated by limiting emissions from vehicles, power plants and other large stationary sources.
Those four endangerment cases were filed by the Coalition for Responsible Regulation, a Texas-based nonprofit association of industry and business interests, to challenge the EPA's first-ever rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Pennsylvania and 15 other states had intervened on behalf of the EPA.
Pennsylvania also is listed in court documents as "terminated" from a 2008 federal lawsuit brought by New York that challenged the EPA's 2008 smog regulations as too weak to protect human health. Pennsylvania was one of 12 states, along with the District of Columbia, that had sided with New York.
All five cases are pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The smog case, New York v. U.S. EPA, was filed in May 2008 and has been put "in abeyance," meaning it's on hold while the EPA works on new, stricter rules limiting the emissions of smog-producing air pollutants.
First Published September 2, 2011 12:00 am
