New Jersey and Pennsylvania among the petitioners
By E.A. Crunden@eacrunden Waste Dive
A coalition of nine states and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) filed a brief earlier this month over the U.S. EPA’s “delay rule,” which has stalledlandfill methane regulations. The Aug. 12 brief was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, with attorneys general from California, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Pennsylvania among the petitioners.
EDF confirmed the brief is separate from litigation started in May 2018 over delaying federal implementation of the 2016 Emissions Guidelines (EG) rule, also involving the environmental group and all of the same states apart from New Jersey. The target of the new action is more concerned with shifting deadlines — EPA published its final EG rule in August 2019, giving itself two years to promulgate a federal plan for states that do not submit their own plans under the EG requirements.
The new brief targets the agency’s timing and states “EPA has deployed a series of tactics to delay implementing the standards, without ever providing a valid reason for doing so.” The petitioners are asking the court to vacate the delay and require the agency to immediately implement the rule, saying any further stalling will have adverse environmental and public health effects.
Sources familiar with the two cases over the EG rule said both challenge the ways in which EPA has not implemented regulatory protections immediately, albeit in different ways. The first case targeted the agency’s initial lack of activity on the EG rule, while the second concerns the affirmative changing of its deadline.
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