Court Closes EPA Exception on Toxic Factory Pollution
Dow Chemical Co., Exxon Mobil Corp., and other manufacturers aren’t automatically exempt from clean- air rules during factory starts, stops and malfunctions, an appeals court ruled.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can’t exclude factory emissions of arsenic and other toxic metals from the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said today. The 1994 exception was expanded under President George W. Bush, and manufacturers used it routinely, said James Pew, an attorney with Earthjustice, an Oakland, California-based environmental group.
“The practical effect of this loophole was the bad actors could get away with noncompliance with emissions standards on a regular basis,” Pew said in a telephone interview. “There’s a huge amount of toxic pollution going into the air thanks to this loophole that will hopefully start being controlled a lot better.”