Legal decision paves way for tighter US air-quality rules

Already under fire from green groups over its repeated failure to introduce tighter carbon regulations, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received another blow yesterday when a US Appeals Court threw out rules preventing states imposing tighter air-quality standards.

The decision raises the prospect of significantly tighter pollution monitoring requirements for heavy industries, such as oil refinery, power plants and chemical and metal manufacturers.

Under changes to the Clean Air Act introduced in 1990, individual states were allowed to issue pollution permits to industrial facilities and implement monitoring systems to ensure legal pollution levels were not breached. However, in 2006 the Bush administration introduced new rules stopping states from requiring new monitoring of industrial sites, prompting a legal challenge from environmental group the Sierra Club.

Yesterday, federal judges for the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the Sierra Club in a two-to-one vote, ruling that the block on new monitoring under the Clean Air Act "is contrary to the statutory directive that each permit must include adequate monitoring requirements".

Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope hailed the decision as a "huge victory", adding that it should provide states with the power to tighten air-quality standards.

"As one of the first rollbacks of the Bush administration, this rule helped set a pattern of limiting the application of environmental laws to benefit polluters and denying the public the right to know about pollution in their communities," he said. "Today's decision will give states back the tools they need to hold polluters accountable and help ensure that everyone has clean, healthy air to breathe."

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, EPA spokesman Timothy Lyons said the agency "will determine an appropriate course of action" after it reviews the decision, although the paper notes that historically the agency has had little success in overturning appeals court decisions.

The decision is a major victory for environmental and green business groups, as well as environmentally progressive states such as California, which have been waging a legal war against the EPA's interpretation of various clean air and carbon regulations.

In the past few months alone, the agency has faced legal action over its refusal to link wildlife legislation with climate change rules, failure to allow California to enact its own fuel efficiency standards and the delaying of a decision on whether or not to include carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act.