As of Sept. 30, Ohio lawmakers eliminated a key legal tool used to rein in air pollution from power plants and industrial sites. Now, advocates are suing to restore that right.
For decades, environmental groups in Ohio and elsewhere have used air nuisance rules in state plans as a catchall way to enforce the federal Clean Air Act. Ohio’s version let people take legal action against companies whose emissions “endanger the health, safety or welfare of the public, or cause unreasonable injury or damage to property.” The rule dates back more than 50 years.
Defendants in cases brought under Ohio’s version of the rule have included Suncoke Energy, AK Steel–Middletown Works, Georgia-Pacific Corp., and Phthalchem. Consent decrees and settlements have produced orders or agreements to stop alleged nuisances, clean up waste, and expand monitoring.
But a last-minute addition to the state’s 3,156-page budget bill, House Bill 96, told the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cut that protection out of the state’s Clean Air Act plan.
“The air nuisance rule is the tool that Ohioans have to hold polluters accountable,” said Neil Waggoner, the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign manager for the Midwest. “This is the state government saying … we’re going to take this away from you in the most secretive fashion possible.”
Experts warn that eliminating the right to file air nuisance complaints weakens Ohio’s enforcement of pollution measures at an already perilous moment for environmental regulation.
For months, the Trump administration has been rolling back federal pollution standards and making huge personnel cuts to the staff charged with enforcing the remaining rules and permits. The Ohio EPA has authority to enforce the Clean Air Act but doesn’t always pursue alleged violations.
“Both at the federal and state level, we’re seeing less enforcement,” said Miranda Leppla, who heads Case Western Reserve University’s Environmental Law Clinic and represents the Ohio Environmental Council and the Sierra Club in the lawsuit. “If Ohioans don’t have the ability to bring these enforcement actions on their own through the air nuisance rule, there’s a very serious concern that air quality will continue to degrade and Ohioans’ health will get worse.”
Echoing a recent law in Louisiana, HB 96 also blocks the Ohio EPA from acting on data that groups may collect through community air-monitoring efforts. Such data can fill important gaps and alert communities and enforcement officials to problems that may not be detected by EPA monitors miles away.
Ohio’s limits on using the data will particularly harm fence-line communities, Leppla said.
Great Job Kathiann M. Kowalski & the Team @ Canary Media Source link for sharing this story.
