Wheelabrator Sues To Stop City From Enforcing Tougher Pollution Standards With Clean Air Act
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Baltimore incinerators and trade associations have filed a lawsuit against the city, saying the Baltimore Clean Air Act is illegal and conflicts with existing state and federal requirements.
Wheelabrator Baltimore, Curtis Bay Energy, Energy Recovery Council, National Waste & Recycling Association, and TMS Hauling today filed the attached lawsuit against the city in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
Wheelabrator Baltimore issued a statement earlier Tuesday:
"We, together with the National Waste & Recycling Association, the Energy Recovery Council, Curtis Bay Energy LP, and a small Baltimore-based waste hauler, are challenging the City ordinance in federal court as unlawful. Under federal and state law, the City does not have the authority to infringe on an area – air quality – already fully protected by federal and state laws, regulations, permits, and enforcement programs. The City's ordinance, which will cost local taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, sets arbitrary standards. In contrast, the existing stringent limits in federal and state regulations are based upon evidence-based scientific studies that aggressively protect public health and the environment by requiring installation and operation of the best available pollution control technologies. Even more unreasonable are the requirements in the City law to install emissions monitoring technology that does not exist. We are confident we will prevail in court."
The lawsuit is seeking to invalidate an "illegal effort by the City to force the Wheelabrator Baltimore waste-to-energy facility and the Curtis Bay Baltimore Regional Medical Waste Incinerator, a hospital/medical/infectious waste incineration facility to shut down by imposing extraordinarily low emission limits and other mandates that the City has no authority to require,"
Baltimore City Council recently passed, and Mayor Catherine Pugh signed the Baltimore Clean Air Act.
It is an effort by the City to regulate air emissions that have been subject to federal and state air quality management under the federal Clean Air Act for fifty years.
The lawsuit says the Act is not a good faith effort to regulate air emissions, and claims it is a "targeted attempt to shut down two specific facilities.
The Wheelabrator incinerator disposes of much of the region's household trash.
