WASHINGTON (CN) - A federal judge dismissed claims that the Environmental Protection Agency failed to determine whether nonroad vehicles and engines contribute to air pollution, but claims that the agency failed to investigate pollution emissions from aircraft engines can advance.
Several prominent environmental groups sued the EPA and its administrator, Lisa Jackson, seeking to compel agency action regarding the regulation of emissions by nonroad vehicles and engines, including boats and aircraft.
The EPA answered by moving to dismiss claims that it failed to determine whether greenhouse gases and black carbon emitted by marine vessels, nonroad vehicles and aircraft engines contributed to pollution.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. axed claims that the EPA failed to investigate and regulate marine vessel and nonroad vehicle emissions. He denied, however, the motion to dismiss claims that the EPA failed to investigate aircraft engine emissions, finding that the agency eschewed "a required component of the regulatory process."
The Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety, Friends of the Earth, the International Center for Technology Assessment and Oceana are the environmental groups that filed the complaint with hopes of pushing the government toward regulating such vehicles in compliance with the Clean Air Act.
They claimed the EPA had failed to respond to their petitions.
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