Stanford Environmental Law Clinic Announces Ninth Circuit Upholds Case Requiring...

Stanford Environmental Law Clinic Announces Ninth Circuit Upholds Case Requiring U.S. EPA to Regulate Invasive Species Pollution

STANFORD, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
The Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School today
announced that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of
environmental organizations seeking to force the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate ship discharges under the Clean
Water Act. Dealing a setback to the shipping industry, the decision
follows a 2005 lower court ruling that the EPA had illegally exempted
ship discharges from Clean Water Act requirements. That decision gave
the agency until September 2008 to end the regulatory exemption and
issue permits to ships, an order that the EPA appealed to the Ninth
Circuit.

"The EPA spent nearly ten years fighting against using the
nation's only comprehensive law to combat an environmental plague that
is costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars," said Deborah Sivas,
Director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School, which
represented the three plaintiff groups. "We are gratified that the
Appeals Court has held the EPA accountable so that this country can
begin to control the dangerous tide of invasive species."

The court's ruling today upholds the lower court's order directing
the EPA to take specific action to ensure that shipping companies
comply with the Clean Water Act and restrict the discharge of invasive
species in ballast water. In mid-June, the EPA issued a draft permit
to regulate all vessel discharges. The draft permit requires treatment
of a wide range of pollutants contained in ballast water and many
other types of ship discharges.

Nina Bell, Executive Director of the Portland, Ore.-based
Northwest Environmental Advocates, said the court's decision will
properly shift some of the burden of invasive species from taxpayers
to shippers. "The Ninth Circuit's decision is very important for the
taxpayers who have been paying the huge price of the EPA's continuing
refusal to implement the Clean Water Act," said Bell. "If the EPA had
used its Congressional mandate thirty years ago, this country would
have been using the Clean Water Act to effectively control ship
discharges for all that time," she added.

The plaintiff groups cautioned that the shipping industry has
already shifted its fight from the courts to lobbying Congress. "As
soon as we won the district court case in 2005, the shipping industry
immediately turned to Congress for a special exemption from the Clean
Water Act, to preserve their ability to pollute at the nation's
expense," Bell said.

Live species from other countries are carried to U.S. waters in
ballast water that ships use for stabilization. The ballast water is
discharged into bays, estuaries, and the Great Lakes as ships approach
port and when cargo for export is loaded. Over 21 billion gallons of
ballast water from international ports is discharged into U.S. waters
each year. The cost of damage caused by invasive species to the U.S.
economy is estimated in the billions of dollars annually.

"The San Francisco Bay and Delta have been completely invaded by
non-native species introduced by commercial ships coming to our ports.
Species such as the Asian clam and Chinese mitten crab are clogging
the intake pipes of drinking water facilities and power plants,
harming the commercial fishing industry, and destroying native species
habitat," said Sejal Choksi, San Francisco Baykeeper.

The absence of effective federal action, combined with the high
cost of invasive species to the environment, industries, and drinking
water sources, has led numerous states to pass their own pollution
control laws. Michigan and Minnesota require shippers to have
discharge permits. California has the strictest controls on the
discharge of ballast-borne invasive species in the world. Six Great
Lakes states--New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Minnesota,
and Wisconsin--joined the environmental groups' lawsuit to persuade
the court to require a federal regulatory program.

The challenge was brought by Northwest Environmental Advocates,
San Francisco Baykeeper and The Ocean Conservancy, three of the
signers of a petition filed with EPA in January 1999. EPA denied the
petition in 2003, triggering the lawsuit. The Environmental Law Clinic
at Stanford Law School and Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center
(PEAC) at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., represent the
three organizations.

About Northwest Environmental Advocates

Northwest Environmental Advocates, based in Portland, Ore., works
through advocacy and education to protect and restore water and air
quality, wetlands, and wildlife habitat.

About Baykeeper

Founded in 1989, Baykeeper works to reverse the environmental
degradation of the past and promote new strategies and policies to
protect the water quality of the San Francisco Bay. For nearly two
decades, Baykeeper and its Deltakeeper project have been the premier
watchdogs of the water quality of the vast San Francisco Bay-Delta
watershed.

About the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford

The Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School
(http://www.law.stanford.edu/program/clinics/environmental) enables
students to provide legal assistance to nonprofit organizations on a
variety of environmental issues, focusing primarily on natural
resource conservation. The clinic's clients include large national
environmental organizations and a variety of regional and local
grassroots groups. Working under clinic attorneys, students routinely
investigate cases, assist clients in developing legal strategies,
draft comment letters, court pleadings, and briefs, present testimony
before administrative agencies, and argue cases in state and federal
courts. Clinic students also provide policy advice and work on
regulatory and legislative reform in the environmental field.

About Stanford Law School

Stanford Law School (www.law.stanford.edu) is one of the nation's
leading institutions for legal scholarship and education. Its alumni
are among the most influential decision makers in law, politics,
business, and high technology. Faculty members argue before the
Supreme Court, testify before Congress, and write books and articles
for academic audiences, as well as the popular press. Along with
offering traditional law school classes, the school has embraced new
subjects and new ways of teaching.

Media:
Stanford Law School
Amy Poftak, 650-725-7516
Assistant Director of Communications
poftak@law.stanford.edu
or
Comment:
Stanford Law
Deborah Sivas, 650-723-0325
dsivas@stanford.edu
or
NWEA
Nina Bell, 503-295-0490
nbell(at)advocates-nwea.org
or
Baykeeper
Sejal Choksi, 925-330-7757
sejal@baykeeper.org

Copyright Business Wire 2008