N.C. Pollution Lawsuits Come Amidst Lax Federal Enforcement

The neoliberal agenda of devolution – that is, shifting responsibilities from the federal arena to state and local governments – is being brought to bear on the nation’s environmental enforcement system, as recent developments in North Carolina show.

N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper and an environmental group last week announced plans to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its refusal to take action on air pollution wafting in from out of state – plans that come as the federal agency faces charges of failing to take tough enforcement actions against polluters.

Cooper notified the EPA of his intent to sue the agency for not responding in a timely fashion to North Carolina’s petition for help in controlling air pollution from upwind states. The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) also told the EPA that it intended to file a citizen lawsuit on behalf of Environmental Defense over the agency’s failure to act.

“Every day our petition is delayed is a missed opportunity to make a real impact on pollution,” Cooper said. “North Carolina has made strides in cleaning up our own air, but we know that dirty air doesn’t stop at the state line.”

In March of this year, Cooper petitioned the EPA under the Clean Air Act, asking the agency to force coal-burning power plants in 13 other states to reduce the amount of pollution they’re contributing to North Carolina. The plants are located in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

The EPA had until Nov. 18 to determine whether the facilities named in Cooper’s petition were contributing significantly to North Carolina’s difficulty meeting standards for particulate matter and ozone, but it did not act by that date. Cooper this month also threatened to sue the Tennessee Valley Authority over its failure to adequately reduce air pollution from coal-fired power plants.

More than 1,000 people in North Carolina die each year due to exposure to power plant pollution alone, the ninth-highest rate in the country, according to the SELC. Hundreds of thousands more suffer asthma attacks and other respiratory problems from breathing dirty air.

"The 'P' in EPA stands for protection, and it's time for us to get that protection from power plant pollution," said Michael Shore of Environmental Defense.

Report Faults Federal Enforcement of Pollution Laws

Cooper’s and the SELC’s actions come as the EPA confronts charges of failing to enforce the nation’s environmental laws.

Last month the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) – a nonprofit founded by a former EPA regulator frustrated with the current administration’s environmental policies – released a report that found a steep decline in the number of civil lawsuits filed against polluters under Bush.

In the last three years of the Clinton administration, the U.S. Justice Department filed 152 federal lawsuits against companies for violating environmental laws, but there were only 36 such actions in the first three years of the Bush administration, the study found. The decline in actions to enforce the Clean Air Act was particularly dramatic, with only nine such lawsuits filed by the EPA from Jan. 19, 2001 through Jan. 18, 2004, compared to 61 in the three years prior to Jan. 19, 2001.

Furthermore, the EPA’s enforcement staff last November was told to “set aside” investigations against more than 70 power companies that are some of the biggest sources of air pollution in the U.S., according to the EIP report. The agency had earlier referred 14 cases against power companies to the Justice Department for prosecution, but the department has filed only one new case since January 2001.

The EPA’s own enforcement report released this month shows that civil penalties for enforcement of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and environmental laws other than Superfund declined to $57 million, the lowest level during the 15 years in which EPA has tracked such data.

Not surprisingly, the energy and natural resources sector has been a major financial backer of the current administration, contributing more than $4.4 million to the Bush campaign in the latest election cycle alone, according to OpenSecrets.org. Cooper, meanwhile, was handily re-elected to his post earlier this month with the backing of the Conservation Council of North Carolina’s political action committee.

For more information on devolution and its implications for the environment, visit the Web site of the Center for Progressive Regulation, a nonprofit research and educational organization comprised of university-affiliated academics. The group’s member scholars include a number of professors from North Carolina universities, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke and Wake Forest.