NRDC criticizes EPA attackers

John Walke, Clean Air Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, writes an essay responding to legislators and industry representatives who have been attacking the EPA and seeking to weaken its authority to protect the nation’s air and water resources.

Walke points out that the EPA’s enforcement of our environmental laws has already been weakened by 8 years of Bush administration intransigence:

In April 2008, the Bush EPA released a 20-page spreadsheet of 94 EPA rules or actions under just the Clean Air Act that had been challenged in court until that point during the Bush administration.

As of August 2011, 37 of those cases have been decided by a court, and in nearly two-thirds of those cases (23) the courts overturned the Bush EPA rules. (The remaining 57 cases have either settled, been voluntarily dismissed, voluntarily remanded, or are still pending in court.)

In 15 of those 23 adverse rulings, the courts found that the Bush EPA had contradicted or disregarded the plain language of the Clean Air Act. This is the worst way for EPA to lose a federal environmental lawsuit, because it reflects a court’s judgment that the agency defied the plain instructions of the law.

Public health and environmental groups were the prevailing parties in 18 of those 23 Clean Air Act rulings against the Bush EPA. These groups prevailed in 13 of the 15 “plain language” court decisions. EPA lost this startling number of Clean Air Act cases because the Bush administration had adopted unlawful regulations that benefited polluting industries at the expense of human health and the environment, despite unambiguous statutory directives requiring otherwise. This was truly out-of-control behavior.

These adverse court rulings occurred primarily in the Bush administration’s second term, because it took this long for unlawful, deregulatory regulations issued during the first term to wind their way through the courts. When federal courts returned these unlawful regulations to EPA for correction, the Bush administration then failed to re-promulgate these “remanded” rules before leaving office.

Rep. Fred Upton, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is supporting several bills that would limit the EPA’s authority to write or enforce regulations to protect the environment.