| Montreal, 5/09/2008 – The Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has published its overall work plan to collect relevant information with respect to the factual record on submission SEM-04-005 (Coal-fired Power Plants), submitted to the Secretariat on 20 September 2004, by Sierra Legal Defence Fund—now Ecojustice—and Waterkeeper Alliance, on behalf of Friends of the Earth Canada, Friends of the Earth-US, Earthroots, Centre for Environmentally Sustainable Development, Great Lakes United, Pollution Probe, Waterkeeper Alliance, and Sierra Club (the “Submitters”).
The Submitters assert that the United States, through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is failing to effectively enforce sections 303 and 402 of the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) with respect to mercury discharges to air and water from coal-fired power plants, by issuing permits under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) or delegating the issuance of State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) permits that allow for ongoing point source discharges of mercury into US waterways; approving inadequate state anti-degradation policies and implementation procedures that fail to safeguard water bodies; and failing to use its authority to require states to pass Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for mercury where water quality standards are not being met or a beneficial use has been lost, and to issue its own TMDLs where state action is inadequate.
On 23 June 2008, the CEC Council unanimously decided to instruct the Secretariat to develop a factual record with regard to specific questions identified by the Secretariat in its notification. Among other matters, the Council specified that the factual investigation should include questions of NPDES and SPDES permitting in approximately 40 coal-fired power plants in 10 US states; calculations of TMDLs as established by the relevant authority; and EPA’s response to alleged failures by US states to list mercury-impaired waterways or to establish TMDLs.
For more information, please visit the CEC’s Citizen Submissions on Enforcement Matters page.
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