Federal court finds EPA's air toxics 
efforts "grossly delinquent"

WASHINGTON (08/11/06) -- A federal court has found the U.S. EPA's efforts to protect public health from toxic air pollution to be "grossly delinquent." Deciding a lawsuit brought by Sierra Club against EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ordered EPA to issue dozens of long overdue air toxics controls. 

"This decision is a breath of fresh air" said Sierra Club air committee chair Marti Sinclair. "EPA's failure to control air toxics has left millions of Americans exposed to high levels of risk for cancer and other disease. Congress ordered EPA to bring this problem to heel in 2000, and for six years this agency has just ignored the law. While we prefer compromise and discussion to legal action, it is heartening to know that in situations like this where there is gross neglect, the Court can force action for the public good." 

The court's decision follows closely on the heels of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued last week, which found that EPA has failed to protect the public from air toxics. The GAO reported that EPA had de-prioritized air toxics control and had failed to set any limit on the poisonous emissions from dozens of categories of smaller industrial sources. EPA itself has acknowledged these uncontrolled sources to be the worst contributor to toxic urban air, and the agency's own studies show that they create unacceptable risks of cancer and other disease.

Rejecting EPA's excuse that it lacked resources to control air toxics, the Court found the agency has neglected its obligations under the Clean Air Act while pursuing its own regulatory agenda: "EPA currently devotes substantial resources to discretionary rulemakings, many of which make existing regulations more congenial to industry, and several of which since have been found unlawful." The Court found EPA's failure to meet its statutory obligations "owes less to the magnitude of the task at hand than to the 'footdragging efforts of a delinquent agency' or an attempt by EPA to prioritize its own regulatory agenda over that set by Congress."

"EPA needs to spend taxpayer dollars that Congress entrusts to it on the tasks that Congress set," said Earthjustice attorney James Pew, who represented Sierra Club in the suit.  "By diverting taxpayer dollars away from the tasks that Congress set and toward the current administration's anti-environmental agenda, EPA has betrayed the public trust.  It is unfortunate that Americans should be sickened literally as well as figuratively by this agency's conduct."