It’s a tie-score so far to the challenges by environmentalists when it comes to court rulings over coal ash. One for the environmentalists and one against.
As OK Energy Today reported last week, a Washington, D.C. judge refused to delay a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s move to let Oklahoma regulate its own coal ash disposal.
But in a ruling late last week, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it would not revisit an earlier ruling that found the Clean Water Act does not apply to pollution from a coal ash site in Tennessee. The court denied requests of environmentalists to rehear the case.
It was in September 2018 when the court rejected the arguments of the Tennessee Clean Water Network and the Tennessee Scenic Rivers Association, two groups that were represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center.
The groups contended pollutants from coal ash disposal ponds had seeped into groundwater and made their way into the nearby Cumberland River.
The law explicitly applies to the discharge of pollutants from a discrete “point source” into a federally regulated waterway — a specification the judges interpreted to exclude discharges that migrate to a waterway via groundwater.
The issue is the subject of a heated legal debate that could be decided by the Supreme Court this year.
In the Oklahoma coal ash dispute, the EPA sought to delay a lawsuit filed by Waterkeeper Alliance Inc. , the Sierra Club and Location Environmental Action Demanded Agency. The groups have challenged a decision made last year allowing the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality regulate coal ash disposal rather than the EPA.
