Legal Update: Expanding our Reach

The Council’s legal team has never been more active. Council attorneys are currently litigating six cases with statewide, and in some instances, national implications. The cases run the gamut from appealing air permits, to zoning challenges, to constitutional claims. The legal team is also very engaged on policy and regulatory matters, fighting for best-in-the-nation methane regulations and working to hold regulatory agencies accountable.

In October of this year, the Council took a drastic but very necessary action. The Council petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) to strip Allegheny County Health Department (“ACHD”) of its Title V permitting authority. Under the Clean Air Act, all large sources of air pollution must obtain a Title V permit. These permits are critical to ensuring that facilities comply with pollution limits by requiring the use of specific technology, monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting. These permits also are essential to community oversight by providing a single source of all applicable air pollution requirements for a facility, making it possible for environmental groups and citizen groups to hold facilities and enforcement agencies accountable.

ACHD, which is responsible for issuing Title V permits in Allegheny County, has completely failed to fulfill its duties. Based on a Council review, ACHD has not issued Title V permits within the required 18-month term for as many as fifteen large facilities. Two of these facilities have been waiting over twenty years for a permit; five more have been waiting for over six years. Still others were only just issued Title V permits after twenty-year waits. Among these facilities are some of the largest polluters in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The failure to review and issue timely Title V permits has real consequences. For instance, U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Facility has been shutting down two furnaces every month for at least three years and labeling the shutdowns as “breakdowns,” which are “sudden and unexpected.” By labeling what are—by all appearances—planned shutdowns as “breakdowns,” U.S. Steel avoids requirements to measure and control pollution emitted during these events.

Among the Council’s many litigations, the Council’s challenge to Sunoco’s Mariner East pipeline should soon see important developments. Sunoco has sought to delay at every turn. But the Council, its members, and the environment cannot wait. Sunoco is creating great harm to local ecosystems by cutting down trees, disturbing streams, and forcibly taking people’s property to build its export pipeline. The Council recently filed a motion to push the case forward, forcing Sunoco to begin turning over information and documentation about the impacts and purposes of the Mariner East project. The stakes in this case couldn’t be higher. There is a rush to build new pipelines across Pennsylvania to move gas and gas liquids from the western Pennsylvania to coastal markets and export terminals. Not only will these pipelines facilitate further fracking which increases local air pollution, but the pipelines themselves fragment wildlife habitats, disturb natural open spaces, leak harmful air pollutants, and present risks of catastrophic accidents, such as explosions and fires. If the Council’s efforts are successful, the need and impacts of pipelines will be required to be much more carefully scrutinized.

As the Council’s legal practice continues to expand, the Council’s ability to protect everyone’s right to breathe clean air improves. The Council always begins with education and advocacy, but when those fail, the credible threat of litigation can represent a necessary tool in ensuring our environmental laws are obeyed and constitutional protections respected.

For more information, contact Joe Minott at joe_minott@cleanair.org