Chesapeake Bay Lawsuit Marks New Test For EPA's TMDL Power

摘要

The American Farm Bureau Federation's (AFBF) legal challenge of EPA's novel, multistate pollution load limit for the Chesapeake Bay watershed could provide a new test of the agency's authority to set pollution limits among different sources and to dictate state actions in cleaning up waterbodies. In its Jan. 10 lawsuit, AFBF, et al. v. EPA, the farm industry group charges the recently finalized Bay total maximum daily load (TMDL) for nutrients and sediment is "fatally flawed" because the allocation of pollutant loads among sources in the TMDL is too specific and exceeds agency authority under the Clean Water Act (CWA).