EPA Defends Denial Of Petition For New Washington State Aquatics Criteria

摘要

EPA is defending its 2017 decision to deny a petition from environmentalists seeking new aquatic life water quality criteria for Washington state, telling a federal district court that environmentalists have failed to meet the bar for judicial intervention. "Only in the 'rarest and most compelling' circumstances will a court overturn an agency's decision not to initiate rulemaking," EPA tells the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in a Sept. 17 brief. But Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA) "has failed to sustain its burden of demonstrating that such circumstances exist here," the brief continues. EPA's denial of NWEA's petition requesting the agency "carry out the significant undertaking of evaluating the existing aquatic life criteria to make necessity determinations, and then promulgating water quality standards for all aquatic life criteria in the State of Washington, fits comfortably within the breadth of discretion accorded EPA under [Clean Water Act (CWA)] Section 303(c)(4)(B)," the brief says.