State to join greenhouse gas lawsuit vs. EPA

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Oct 4, 2003 | by Don Thompson, Associated Press

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Gray Davis said Friday he will join other states in suing the federal Environmental Protection Agency to make sure the agency cannot interfere with California's efforts to control greenhouse gases.

The announcement comes the week after Davis and his Democratic counterparts from Washington and Oregon laid out a plan to combat global warming, and after the federal agency in August said it lacks authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from motor vehicles.

It follows Davis' signing of a law last year making California the first state to restrict vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions.

The suit on behalf of Davis and the California Air Resources Board will not be filed at least until later this month, and likely will be just a brief petition to the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

But officials from Davis' Environmental Protection Agency and Air Resources Board joined a deputy attorney general, the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council in announcing the suit four days before voters decide whether to recall the governor. Republican front-runner Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous the gas-guzzling Hummer.

Davis' administration said the delay is to allow time to coordinate with states it expects to join in a lawsuit, including Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Washington and Vermont.

Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts sued the U.S. EPA in June seeking to force the agency to add carbon dioxide to the list of six pollutants that are regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Davis said global warming "is vital to the future of our state," potentially affecting California's agriculture, forests, shoreline, and the Sierra snow pack that provides much of the state's water and hydroelectricity.

In addition to deciding that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are not pollutants, officials said the broad language in the U.S. EPA's decision suggests the federal government also intends to block states from acting on their own to regulate emissions.

The U.S. EPA office in San Francisco referred calls to the agency's Washington headquarters, where a spokesman did not return a telephone call from The Associated Press seeking comment.