August 26, 2008

12 States Sue EPA Over Refinery Emissions

New York and 11 other states are suing the Environmental Protection Agency for violating the federal Clean Air Act by refusing to issue standards for controlling global warming pollution emissions from oil refineries, Reuters reports.

The other states and cities in the suit are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Washington D.C.

The suit seeks to force the EPA to control oil refinery emissions of greenhouse pollution, which the suit says amounts to about 15 percent of U.S. industrial emissions of CO2, and to order the agency to adopt the standards.

Last year, the Supreme Court found that the EPA has the power to regulate GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act, but the EPA head says it is Congress’s job to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases.

States have also sued the EPA to require it set standards for greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and to uphold the right of states to regulate pollution emissions from vehicles, which comes at a time when one of the suing states, California, is challenging the EPA in federal court over its decision last year prohibiting the state from imposing its own emission standards on vehicles.

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