Delaware To Sue EPA Over Air Quality Law Enforcement
DOVER, DE. (CBS) -- The State of Delaware is taking the US Environmental Protection Agency to court. At issue, the lack of effort by the feds that state officials suggest is affecting their air quality.
Notice of Intent letters were sent out this week, informing the EPA that the lawsuit is coming.
"The only way we're going to have long term, sustained clean air in Delaware is for upwind states making sure that they're enforcing the clean air laws on their facilities," Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary Shawn Garvin told KYW Newsradio.
And that's not happening, he says, at power plants in Central and Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The result? Pollution drifting over into Delaware, making it impossible to meet federal clean air regulations, the lawsuit will contend, without help from Washington.
Not that the First State hasn't tried, even resorting to federal petitions to the EPA in 2016. Those petitions, Garvin says, went nowhere.
"We've been having a struggle for many years in getting the EPA to deal with these transport issues and this is another tool that we have to try to get that done by particularly focusing on individual facilities that we are aware are impacting our state."
The lawsuit will ask for an order requiring the feds to force those plants to use their pollution controls to reduce emissions crossing state borders.
