EPA, law firm reach PVC deal

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 6, 2009 - Page: 5B

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, reached a settlement calling for EPA to prepare emission regulations for plants producing polyvinyl chloride, widely known as PVC.

The settlement was signed last week, but announced Thursday by Earthjustice, Earthjustice associate attorney Katie Renshaw said.

In that settlement, EPA agreed to sign a proposed rule to establish a PVC standard no later than Oct. 29, 2010.

EPA agreed to sign a final rule establishing the standards no later than July 29, 2011, according to the settlement.

The settlement stems from a federal lawsuit Earthjustice filed on behalf of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, Mossville Environmental Action Now and the Sierra Club last October.

That lawsuit asked the court to force EPA to move forward with producing PVC emissions regulations.

Standards were set in 1976, but the 1990 Clean Air Act required that new pollution control technology be put in place.

Those new standards were supposed to be developed by EPA by 2000.

Two years after that deadline elapsed, EPA released standards that were basically the same as those set in 1976, Earthjustice attorney Jim Pew said last October.

Earthjustice sued EPA on behalf of Mossville Environmental Action Now and the Sierra Club in order to challenge EPA’s 2002 rule.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the rule in 2004 and sent it back to EPA for more work, he said.

The latest lawsuit was aimed at having EPA move forward with that work, Renshaw said.

The new PVC standard will look at the PVC’s industry emissions such as dioxins, lead, hydrogen chloride and vinyl chloride and come up with pollution standards, she said.