By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: March 14, 2007
WASHINGTON, March 13 — A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rebuked the Environmental Protection Agency in a decision Tuesday, indicating that the regulators had flouted Congress and the courts in setting the standards governing hazardous air pollution emissions from plants making bricks and ceramics.
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“If the Environmental Protection Agency disagrees with the Clean Air Act’s requirements for setting emission standards it should take its concerns to Congress,” the judges wrote in an unusually pointed final paragraph.
“If the E.P.A. disagrees with this court’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act,” they continued, the agency should appeal its earlier ruling. “In the meantime, it must obey the Clean Air Act as written by Congress and interpreted by this court.”
In a statement on the Web site of Earthjustice, the organization that represented the Sierra Club in its suit against the E.P.A. over the standards, James Pew, a lawyer, said: “This decision is not just about brick kilns. It is about an agency that thinks it is above the law, and chooses to ignore Congress, the courts and the citizens who have called upon E.P.A. to protect against this pollution.”
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