EPA won’t appeal courtroom win for Cuccinelli, Fairfax – oversteps bounds on stormwater regs

The Environmental Protection Agency will not appeal a January ruling that handed Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II a courtroom victory over a federal agency he has tangled with more than once with since being elected to office in 2009.

A federal judge had ruled the EPA overstepped its bounds in trying to regulate stormwater in a Northern Virginia watershed — a ruling Mr. Cuccinelli says could have cost the state and Fairfax County upward of $300 million.

“This EPA mandate would have been expensive, cumbersome, and incredibly difficult to implement,” said Mr. Cuccinelli, who argued for the Virginia Department of Transportation and was joined by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in the case. “And it was likely to do more harm than good, as its effectiveness was unproven and it would have diverted hundreds of millions of dollars Fairfax County was already targeting for more effective methods of sediment control.”

A D.C. appellate court did rule in June that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, dismissing a lawsuit brought by scores of plaintiffs that included the state of Virginia. The court subsequently denied a request to rehear the case en banc, or before the full court.