States, Industry Groups Ask D.C. Circuit To Uphold Ruling on Conductivity Guidance

摘要

States and organizations representing various business interests urged a federal appeals court to uphold a lower court ruling that set aside the Environmental Protection Agency's water conductivity guidance related to coal mining waste rock (National Mining Ass'n v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 12-5310(L), 7/22/13). The water conductivity guidance is part of a pattern of circumventing "cooperative federalism," the 11 states said in their July 22 brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The EPA guidance memo causes tension in the balance of environmental regulation between states and the federal government and undermines the states' interests in permitting and regulating surface mining, potentially harming states' economic output and tax bases through changes in "legal regime," the brief said.