US court refuses to dismiss Vectren pollution case
Date: 04-Nov-02
Country: USA
The court decision allowing the case to proceed against Vectren's Southern Indiana Gas and Electric Co. was praised by environmental groups as an important step in enforcing clean air rules.
Green groups worry that several lawsuits filed by the Clinton administration's Environmental Protection Agency against dirty, aging utilities have not been aggressively pursued by the Bush administration.
The U.S. District Court of Southern Indiana issued the ruling in the Vectren case on Oct. 28, but the decision did not become widely known until Thursday.
Vectren had asked the court to dismiss the EPA's charges, saying that the agency violated the Congressional Review Act requiring government agencies to give "fair notice" of major policy revisions.
The Indiana court rejected Vectren's argument, and said the EPA had applied its so-called "new source review" rules on power plant emissions fairly and consistently.
The new source review program requires U.S. utilities and refineries to invest in state-of-the-art pollution controls if a plant undergoes a major expansion or modification. However, the Bush administration announced a few months ago it plans to relax the rules to make it easier for utilities to comply.
The proposed changes are being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget and are expected to be released soon after the Tuesday election.
Environmentalists said the Indiana ruling also affects other federal lawsuits seeking to force U.S. utilities to install costly and better pollution controls to control smog, acid rain and soot.
The Clinton administration in November 1999 sued nine Midwest and Southern utilities to enforce the rules. Eight of the cases are still under way.
The ruling is "likely to insulate the cases from utility defense that the agency has changed the new source review rules in ways that were either unfair or inconsistent with Congressional intent," said David Wooley, an attorney with the Clean Air Task Force, an advocacy group.
"The court rejected a key industry defense that the EPA position is unclear," Wooley said. "It's likely to set a precedent for other cases."
Those include a bellwether government case against the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power producer. The federal court of appeals in Atlanta is expected to soon issue a ruling in that case.
However, utility lobbyists said the Indiana ruling would have little impact on other cases.
"The opinion was an extremely narrow one, dealt with very limited facts, and carefully avoided prejudging the major new source review issues," said Scott Segal, an attorney for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council.
An EPA spokesman could not be reached for comment.
