Sierra Club v. Environmental Protection Agency

499 F.3d 653 (2007)

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Sierra Club v. Environmental Protection Agency

United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
499 F.3d 653 (2007)

  • Written by Tanya Munson, JD

Facts

Prairie State Generating Company (Prairie) applied to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a permit to build a coal-fired electrical generating plant in southern Illinois. The plant was a mine-mouth plant because it was sited at the mouth of a coal seam. This would allow coal to be brought up by a conveyor belt more than half a mile long from the mine to the plant. The coal in this mine had a high sulfur content. To burn low-sulfur, clean coal, Prairie would have to transport low-sulfur coal from mines more than a thousand miles away and change the design of its plant. The EPA approved Prairie’s permit. Sierra Club requested that the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board (the board) reverse the issuance of the permit. The board refused. The Sierra Club brought suit on the ground that the EPA violated the Clean Air Act (CAA) because it did not conduct the best available control technology (BACT) for a redesign of the plant to burn low-sulfur coal.

Rule of Law

Issue

Holding and Reasoning (Posner, J.)

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Casebooks

Environmental Law

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