The steel industry is continuing its legal fight against recently tightened Clean Air Act standards clamping down on soot emissions after EPA acknowledged significant mistakes in the version published last summer.
The American Iron and Steel Institute and two other groups in a lawsuit filed Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenged an interim agency fix issued in February.
The suit follows a separate challenge brought last fall with the D.C. Circuit. The court has since frozen proceedings in that litigation, both to let EPA correct the initial regulations and to weigh an administrative petition for reconsideration also brought by the three groups. Besides the institute, the challengers are the Steel Manufacturers Association and Specialty Steel Industry of North America.
The updated regulations overhauled New Source Performance Standards for electric arc furnaces used by “mini-mills,” which turn scrap metal into finished steel products. The rules aim to better curb soot releases under the law’s requirement to adopt the “best system of emission reduction.”
