California files its suit against the EPA

SACRAMENTO
January 2, 2008 10:32am

California filed suit Wednesday against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seeking the right to impose its own, stricter, standards for vehicle emissions.

The EPA denied California a waiver last month.

"It is unconscionable that the federal government is keeping California and 19 other states from adopting these standards. They are ignoring the will of millions of people who want their government to take action in the fight against global warming,” says Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a written statement.

The lawsuit was filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

“The denial letter was shocking in its incoherence and utter failure to provide legal justification for the administrator's unprecedented action,” says California Attorney General Jerry Brown. “The EPA has done nothing at the national level to curb greenhouse gases and now it has wrongfully and illegally blocked California's landmark tailpipe emissions standards, despite the fact that sixteen states have moved to adopt them.”

(California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols commented on the lawsuit in a telephone news conference Wednesday morning. Click on the link below to listen to her prepared remarks)

A parallel lawsuit was also filed Wednesday with the appeallate court.

Five nonprofit groups today filed their lawsuit challenging the Dec. 19, 2007, decision by the EPA.

Suing are the Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Defense, International Center for Technology Assessment, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Sierra Club.

"While global warming marches onward, EPA continues to drag its feet," says Jim Tripp, general counsel of Environmental Defense. "The agency's decision defies the law, the science and the will of states representing nearly half of the U.S. population."

There has been no immediate comment from the EPA.

Over the past 40 years, the U.S. EPA has granted California more than 40 waivers, denying none. More than a dozen other states are expected to file a motion to intervene in support of California's lawsuit, including Massachusetts and New York.

Under the Federal Clean Air Act, California has the right to set its own tougher-than-federal vehicle emission standards, as long as it obtains a waiver from the U.S. EPA., the lawsuit contends.

California has been seeking the EPA’s permission for more than two years.

The state’s proposed standards would phase in over eight years. California contends that if implemented, they would cut global warming emissions from new vehicles in the state by nearly 30 percent by model year 2016.