EDF, Partners Urge D.C. Circuit to Protect Public Health from Oil and Gas Air Pollution

(Washington, D.C. – June 20, 2017) Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and its allies today urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to protect Americans’ health and safety by blocking EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s dangerous attempt to delay vital safeguards against air pollution from the oil and gas sector. AdministratorPruitt suspended these bedrock pollution limits for thousands of oil and gas wells without public input, and did so following a meeting with the American Petroleum Institute at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. that was disclosed only as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request.

The groups filed a lawsuit asking for an emergency stay to stop Administrator Pruitt from stalling the safeguards, which would reduce air pollution from thousands of industrial sources in the oil and gas sector. 

Today, EDF filed a reply to EPA’s arguments in favor of delay, and pointed out that a stay would create an immediate and irreversible public health and environmental threat for communities and families across our nation:

“Administrator Pruitt issued the stay without even bothering to consider the serious and irreversible harms that befall Petitioners’ members and the broader public every day that the stay continues. This lapse is especially egregious because of his subsequent acknowledgement, in a proposal to extend the stay for two more years, that delaying compliance could ‘have a disproportionate effect on children’ … This Court should vacate the unlawful initial stay at issue here.” (Brief, pages 1 and 2) 

The Clean Air Council, Earthworks, Environmental Integrity Project, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club joined EDF on the brief.

The protections at issue are EPA’s common sense leak detection and repair standards – the cornerstone of 2016 clean air standards designed to reduce methane and smog-forming pollution from the oil and gas industry. These measures require oil and gas companies to monitor their well sites and compressor stations at regular intervals to detect leaks of air pollutants, and to repair those leaks promptly. EPA’s standards are based on proven state clean air programs. 

EPA’s suspension of these clean air protections affected more than 18,000 wells and compressor stations in 22 states. (EDF has published a searchable, interactive database identifying the locations of the affected wells.)

Administrator Pruitt suspended these protections for 90 days, just one day before they were set to begin delivering critical pollution reductions to communities across the country. His actions would allow smog-forming volatile organic compounds (VOC), cancer-causing benzene and dangerous methane pollution to be emitted in enormous quantities. The leak detection and repair standards will provide well over 50 percent of the methane reductions and almost fifty percent of the VOC reductions from EPA’s 2016 standard. 

Administrator Pruitt then proposed an additional two-year delay for the same standards – while acknowledging that the environmental health and safety risks of EPA’s action may disproportionately affect children.

“Delaying these vital standards would put more dangerous methane, cancer-causing benzene, and smog-forming pollution into the air that we breathe – and would put the health of our children and families at risk,” said EDF Lead Attorney Peter Zalzal. “It also flouts the clear limits on EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act – which is precautionary in protecting human health and only allows EPA to suspend pollution limits under carefully delineated circumstances. Our nation’s bedrock clean air laws must be carried out to protect America’s children and all Americans from this dangerous pollution.” 

Oral argument has not yet been scheduled.

You can find more information about the issue– and all legal documents in the case – on EDF’s website.