A federal judge has thrown out a long-running lawsuit contesting EPA’s decision during President Donald Trump’s first term to give big hog, cattle and poultry businesses a pass on a key air pollution reporting requirement.
The 2018 suit, brought by the North Carolina-based Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help and nine other organizations in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, initially challenged EPA guidance that exempted concentrated animal feeding operations from letting state and local officials know about the releases of “dangerous levels of pollutants” under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, or EPCRA.
But in a ruling issued Thursday, Judge Timothy Kelly sided with EPA and agribusiness groups in dismissing the suit. Congress, Kelly wrote, in 2018 exempted ammonia and other air emissions stemming from animal waste from an EPA notification requirement under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, often known as the Superfund law.
EPA then followed with a 2019 rule that locked in the exemption from the EPCRA reporting requirement as well. In Thursday’s ruling, Kelly, a Trump appointee, found that the agency did not act “arbitrarily and capriciously” in granting the waiver. He also disagreed with the challengers’ argument that the National Environmental Policy Act required EPA to first evaluate the impact of the 2019 rule.
