In a boon to agribusiness and a blow to environmental activists, a federal appellate court on Wednesday threw out a Sacramento federal judge's ruling that California's pesticide regulation plan violates the Clean Air Act.
The judge's opinion was overturned, and a challenge by a coalition of community organizations to the state's regulatory scheme was ordered dismissed by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
U.S. District Judge Law-rence K. Karlton had found California violated the act by failing to comply with a 1994 plan approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency that called for a crackdown on airborne pesticide emissions in five of the state's regions, including Sacramento.
In April 2006, Karlton ordered the state Department of Pesticide Regulation to "propose, adopt, and submit to EPA for approval and implement regulations no later than Jan. 1, 2008, to achieve the emission reduction goals" set forth in its plan.
The judge found the act was violated when regulators used improper data in calculating the baseline for emission reduction goals and thus did not adopt "enforceable control measures."
Under the terms of Karlton's mandate, new regulations were required to ensure Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley, Ventura, Southeast Desert and South Coast air basins reduced emissions of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, from pesticides by 20 percent from 1990 levels.
VOCs contribute to ground-level ozone – called smog – an air pollutant harmful to humans and plant and animal life.
The state appealed.
The appellate judges said Wednesday that the baseline formula is not "an emission standard or limitation," as those terms are defined in the act.
So, the judges said, Karlton was barred from acting under that section of the Clean Water Act on which the plaintiffs based their challenge.
"It necessarily follows that the district court also lacked jurisdiction to impose remedies based on the alleged deficiency in the baseline methodology," the panel said.
"While we acknowledge that the baseline is a critical foundation, this does not change our view that neither the baseline nor the methodology qualify as independently enforceable aspects of the" state's plan.
"Nor would the district court have jurisdiction to hold, in effect, that the EPA improperly approved an invalid (plan) because it lacked enforceable emission standards," the judges further declared.
Circuit Judges Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, Michael Daly Hawkins and M. Margaret McKeown issued the opinion, authored by McKeown.
Call The Bee's Denny Walsh, (916) 321-1189.
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