Industry, environmentalists pounce on coke oven regulations in competitive processes

Industry and environmental groups are in a legal battle over recently updated air toxics rules for producers of a key coal product.

The public health risks from emissions from coke plants remain “unacceptable,” Haley Lewis, an attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a Wednesday news release announcing the lawsuit against the EPA filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Lewis said the updated standards, while failing to protect the public, “require industry to install modern pollution control technologies that are readily available.”

The lawsuit is helping to represent an Alabama group, People Against Neighborhood Industrial Contamination (PANIC), and a half-dozen other organizations, most of them based in states where the EPA estimates there are 11 coke plants operating.

Also challenging the regulations in separate filings are representatives of the District Court for the District of Columbia: Illinois-based SunCoke Energy, and two industry trade organizations: the American Coke and Coal Chemicals Institute and the Coke Oven Environmental Task Force.