EPA & Louisiana Fail To Protect Citizens from Polluted Haze

This month, environmental protection interests sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the agency’s failure to issue a plan to lower air pollution from coal-fired power plants in Louisiana. Specifically, without a plan under the EPA’s regional haze program, pollution will continue to affect the public health and environment in and adjacent to the state of Louisiana.

What is Haze?

Haze is caused by air pollution—typically from power plants, refineries, and other industrial sources—which then absorbs and reflects light, thus reducing visibility. This same pollution that causes haze also causes serious respiratory problems such as asthma, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and emphysema.

The Clean Air Act, Louisiana, and the EPA

The Clean Air Act was passed to protect air quality; specifically, the visibility protection provisions require that states (or the EPA, if states fail) develop state implementation plans that include enforceable emission limits at major sources of haze-causing pollution in order to ensure reasonable progress in achieving natural visibility conditions in areas impacted by the state’s emissions.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has a nondiscretionary duty to review state implementation plans for regional haze and interstate transport. If the EPA disapproves of those plans (as it did, in part, for the State of Louisiana in 2012), the agency is required to promulgate a federal implementation plan, unless the state corrects the deficiencies in its own plan. Louisiana and EPA both failed, with Louisiana failing to correct the deficiencies, and the EPA failing to issue a federal plan, placing citizen health on the line. Specifically, the EPA found that Louisiana failed to require certain sources to install the proper technology to reduce sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide, nitric dioxide, and other pollutants.

As the complaint alleges, there are at least two areas that suffer from serious air pollution from Louisiana sources, including Breton National Wilderness Area. By complying with mandatory deadlines under the Clean Air Act and promulgating a plan for regional haze in Louisiana, haze-causing pollution can thus be reduced throughout Louisiana, bringing the state closer to natural visibility, helping to reduce haze and improve public health and the environment.

Harrell & Nowak

Air pollution and cancer have a serious link. The EPA has identified 188 separate toxic air pollutants that are known or suspected to cause cancer or other serious health effects. The EPA works with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to safeguard the environment, but it cannot always police the hundreds of illegal chemical releases that occur annually. Exposure to toxic chemicals can cause respiratory illness and injury, neurological disorders and many forms of cancer. If you have fallen ill because of toxic chemical exposure, contact the lawyers at our New Orleans firm, also serving Metairie, Kenner, and nearby communities. We are here to help you.