Landmark NSR Ruling May Further Stymie EPA's Enforcement Efforts

摘要

A federal court in Pennsylvania has dismissed EPA new source review (NSR) enforcement efforts to obtain penalties from a Pennsylvania power plant, holding that the agency could not hold the plant's new owners liable for violations of the agency's clean air permit rules by the plant's prior owners - a ruling that could further curtail EPA's enforcement efforts. In an Oct. 12 ruling in United States of America v. EME Homer City Generation LP, et ai, Judge Terrence McVerry of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania granted the company's motion to dismiss the enforcement action after finding that EME could not be held responsible for any alleged violations of the NSR/Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) rules committed by the prior owner and that a five-year statute of limitations on any of those claims had already elapsed. The ruling is available on InsideEPA.com. See page 2 for details. {Doc ID: 2379151) "The alleged PSD violations constitute singular, separate failures by the former owners to obtain pre-construction permits, rather than ongoing failures to comply with whatever hypothetical conditions might have been imposed during the PSD permitting process. Thus, the United States was required to file suit to recover civil penalties for an alleged PSD program violation within five years of the construction project," the ruling says. The judge also found that the government was barred by the general five-year statute of limitations from seeking to win injunctive relief, which is also a finding that could have significant precedent. EME Homer City is the same company leading the legal challenge to EPA's Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and is one of the nation's largest emitters of sulfur dioxide (SO2). The NSR case focused on projects dating from 1990 that boosted SO2.