Virginia wins water case against Environmental Protection Agency

Virginia won a court challenge Jan. 3 against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) attempts to regulate storm water as a pollutant in the Accotink Creek watershed in Fairfax County, according to The Office of Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

Last July Cuccinelli, representing Virginia Department of Transportation, and Fairfax County asked the court to declare the EPA’s action unlawful. The attorney general argued that the action exceeded the EPA’s statutory authority under the Clean Water Act.  The court agreed that the EPA exceeded its clearly limited statutory authority and granted VDOT and Fairfax County’s motion for a judgment on the pleadings on Jan. 3.

VA Governor Bob McDonnell was quoted in a news release as saying, “The Commonwealth has just saved taxpayers an estimated more than $300 million by prevailing in a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for unlawfully attempting to regulate water itself as a pollutant.  The EPA tried to regulate water as a pollutant in the Accotink Creek watershed.  This would have required the Virginia Department of Transportation to spend at least an additional $70 million to retrofit its existing facilities and redesign new projects to comply with the regulations. Fairfax County would have had to spend more than $300 million to comply with the EPA mandate. Over time the regulation would have impacted numerous other projects, costing even more and having a negative impact on future job creation.

Environmental protection is of “utmost importance” to his administration, the governor asserted. “The Commonwealth adheres to very stringent standards to keep our waterways clean. Virginia major wastewater facilities exceeded pollution reduction goals in 2011 by more than 2,000 percent for nitrogen and more than 450 percent for phosphorus. In fact, in Virginia’s activities in 2011 prevented 2.5 million pounds of nitrogen from entering streams and lakes,” the news release further quoted the governor.