Air quality advocates sue regional regulator over emission credits
May 24—Local air quality advocates moved forward as promised Wednesday with a federal lawsuit aimed at reforming the regional air district's pollution credits system.
The 34-page complaint targets the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District's system of emission reduction credits, or ERCs. The program allows new or expanding operations to buy offsets as a way of making up for the nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and fine particulates their operations vent as exhaust into the atmosphere.
Groups behind Wednesday's filing in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California — the Center on Race, Poverty & The Environment, Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, Committee for a Better Arvin, Committee for a Better Shafter and Delano Guardians — allege the air district has for years violated the federal Clean Air Act by manipulating its own ERC program to the benefit of polluting businesses.
"As a result," the suit states, "new and modified major stationary sources have emitted unmitigated air pollution in one of the most polluted air basins, harming communities that already bear a disproportionate burden of pollution relative to the rest of California and the United States."
If the suit succeeds, it could lead to a reassessment affecting the compliance status of businesses or other permit-holders that purchased ERCs in order to win the district's approval for new or expanded operations.
A spokeswoman said by email Wednesday the district has complied with federal standards for reviews of new and modified stationary sources of pollution. She said it has made progress putting in place appropriate measures that take effect when the district's ERC requirements are found to have fallen short of federal equivalencies.
Spokeswoman Jaime Holt also pointed to work done locally, in consultation with the California Air Resources Board and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to improve the district's permitting program through public engagement. Adjustments made as recently as last month "further enhance and strengthen the (district's) permitting program," she wrote.
"The district operates one of the most stringent permitting and stationary source regulatory programs in the nation," Holt stated, "and a viable permitting program is essential to ensuring that valley businesses, public agencies, public safety, essential services and other sectors are able to obtain needed operating permits."
A key demand by the plaintiffs is that the district go back and correct prior reports that they say relied on faulty calculations for how much pollution needed to be offset by ERCs.
They maintain that, not only did the district underestimate how many ERCs were needed in the past to address pollution, but that it also overestimated air-quality gains achieved in instances where polluters closed and agricultural equipment like irrigation pumps were converted from diesel to electric power.
When in mid-2020 CARB concluded the district had overestimated such gains, district CEO Samir Sheikh wrote that the state's objections highlighted competing interpretations of the district's own rules. Still, he agreed to make changes in response.
The lawsuit basically says those changes haven't gone far enough.
"After decades of watchdogging this corrupt system, we can no longer wait for the San Joaquin Valley Air District to do the right thing by valley breathers," Executive Director Catherine Garoupa of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition said in a news release Wednesday.
The release said the district's failure to adequately protect valley residents results in about $6 billion per year in public health costs, with the greatest burden falling on minority and poor communities.
