Environmental -- 2017



Sierra Club v. EPA   (D.C. Circuit)

Defending EPA's sulfur dioxide regulation against accelerated enforcement

The NAM intervened in a suit brought by the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council against the EPA for its regulation on sulfur dioxide (SO2). The regulation, published August 5, 2013, designated 29 areas as “nonattainment” for SO2 based on recorded air quality monitoring data, and the EPA announced its intention to address the rest of the country in separate regulations in the future. The modeling predictions urged by the Sierra Club would allow areas to be designated as nonattainment when in fact they are not. That would increase the number of such areas, and manufacturers would have to spend billions of dollars to achieve far greater emission reductions than would be required if designations were based on actual air quality monitoring data. The NAM intervened to help secure a more positive regulation for manufacturers. A district court approved a consent decree requiring the EPA to include any areas with stationary sources that emitted more than 16,000 tons of SO2 in 2012 and extending the timeline for the EPA to promulgate a new rule. The deadline is now December 31, 2020, which will allow for real-life modeling data to be used instead of the Sierra Club's recommendation of computer modeling. This is a favorable outcome for manufacturers. The consent decree was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which affirmed the district court’s approval.


Related Documents:
Motion to Intervene  (November 4, 2013)