Environmentalists Urge 5th Circuit To Reject EPA's Defense Of ELG Delay

摘要

Environmentalists are pushing back against EPA and the power sector's defenses of the Trump administration's two-year delay of Obama-era Clean Water Act (CWA) utility wastewater guidelines, arguing that the agency's justifications for extending the rule are "post-hoc rationalization" that a federal appeals court must reject. Groups suing over the delay of the 2015 power plant effluent limitation guidelines (ELG) filed a Nov. 16 reply brief attacking EPA and the utility industry's positions in the case, and warning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that upholding the two-year delay on implementing major elements of the ELG would open the door for the agency to broadly rewrite existing rules regardless of statutory mandates. The brief is available on InsideEPA.com. (Doc. ID: 216989) Under the precedent sought by EPA and the Utility Water Act Group (UWAG) that represents power plants on CWA issues,"federal agencies would have the power to disregard mandatory statutory factors whenever an agency unilaterally determines that such factors are 'not implicated' by the rule they seek to issue," reads the environmentalists' new brief in Clean Water Action, et al., v. EPA, et al.