PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Lori Sitler
Phone: (302) 577-8314
Pager: (302) 247-1132
Date: July 26, 2004

ATTORNEY GENERAL SUES TO ASSURE DELAWARE’S WATER RESOURCES ARE PROTECTED

(Wilmington, DE): Attorney General Jane Brady today announced she is seeking judicial review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new power plant rule in order to assure that Delaware has the flexibility to act as the State deems appropriate to protect Delaware’s water and fishery resources, consistent with the objective of the Clean Water Act. The Rule, issued by EPA on July 9, 2004 and commonly referred to as the Phase II Rule, would change the manner in which companies may have to comply with requirements that they reduce the large amounts of water currently being withdrawn from oceans, bays, and rivers by these facilities. 

Attorney General Brady commented, “I am filing this action to be sure that Delaware retains flexibility to exercise our own best judgment about whether certain technologies should be required to be installed.”

Delaware, along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York today simultaneously filed the Petition for Review in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston and a Request for a Stay with EPA in Washington, DC, asking that the agency delay the effective date of the Rule until the Court has had an opportunity to review the merits of the Rule itself. The suit filed today challenges the creation of variances for existing power plants that allows certain plants to avoid compliance with the Rule solely on the basis of cost. 

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