WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Jan. 21 that the federal Environmental Protection Agency can override state officials and order some anti-pollution measures that may be more costly.
The 5-4 decision, a victory for environmentalists, found the EPA did not go too far when it overruled a decision by Alaska regulators, who wanted to let the operators of a zinc and lead mine use cheaper anti-pollution technology for power generation.
The four justices who dissented said the ruling undercut the states' power to control their environmental policies.
The Alaska case was the first of eight environmental cases on the court's docket this term, an unusually high number. The fight was over whether the Red Dog Mine must use equipment that would reduce pollution from a new generator by 90 percent. The state wanted to allow the mine operator, a major employer in a particularly rural area of Alaska, to use equipment that would only reduce pollution by 30 percent.
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The Clean Air Act allows state officials to make some decisions involving facilities within their borders, but still gives the EPA wide authority to enforce the anti-pollution law passed by Congress in 1970.
"We fail to see why Congress, having expressly endorsed an expansive surveillance role for EPA," elsewhere in the law, "would then implicitly preclude the agency from verifying substantive compliance," with the portion of the law at issue in this case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority.
Ginsburg's usual allies on the court's ideological left joined her in the ruling: Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen Breyer. The crucial fifth vote came from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who usually votes with the court conservatives in states' rights cases.
The four dissenters argued that the decision undercuts states' power to control their environmental policies.
"This is a great step backward in Congress' design to grant states a significant stake in developing and enforcing national environmental objectives," wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
"After today's decision, however, a state agency can no longer represent itself as the real governing body. No matter how much time was spent in consultation and negotiations, a single federal administrator can in the end set all aside by a unilateral order," Kennedy wrote.
Alaska government officials expressed disappointment over the ruling.
"This close decision deals a blow to the authority delegated to states by Congress in the Clean Air Act," said state Attorney General Gregg Renkes.
Dissenting justices recognized that states are more responsive to local conditions and can strike a better balance between preserving environmental quality and encouraging resource development, Renkes said.
"Protecting the environment must be a cooperative effort by both the state and federal governments," he said.
Ernesta Ballard, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, said the state sought primary responsibility for the air permitting program to provide a predictable and stable regulatory environment.
"This case and its outcome have the potential to significantly disrupt that environment," Ballard said.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the ruling did nothing to help the state's air quality or wildlife, but only pointed out the problems that the state has had in the past working with the EPA to implement the Clean Air Act.
"The first time that the state needed EPA to use common sense and grant the state the slightest bit of flexibility in the enforcement of federal regulations, the federal government refused to do so for no good reason," she said.
The mine's technical violation of the standards never would have affected the environment, she said.
"The ruling is just another blow to the concept of states' rights, specifically the right of a state to avoid one-size-fits-all solutions, even when they make little environmental or no economic sense," said Murkowski.
