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DNR Sued over Emissions Regulations
Wisconsin’s largest business group is going to court to challenge the DNR’s ability to regulate some emissions in the state.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce on Friday filed a lawsuit against the Department of Natural Resources, alleging the DNR has wildly overstepped its bounds with emission regulations on things like lawn mowers and snow blowers that are built in Wisconsin.
“Under the Clean Air Act, the federal government, through the Environmental Protection Agency, primarily regulates emissions from mobile sources—and the states, from most stationary sources,” WMC’s suit claims. “Reserving mobile-source regulation for the federal government is dually justified: not only can most mobile sources cross state lines quickly (whether on their own wheels or aboard others); a field of state and federal regulations would “create nightmares for … manufacturers.”
“It’s a new form of an old trick: using power not just to break the law but to obscure the violation with an air of authority,” WMC Litigation Center Deputy Director Nathan Kane said in a statement. “It’s not right that manufacturers have to pay huge sums of money to comply with regulations that are contrary to federal law.”
The DNR says it does not have any statewide regulations on the emissions from lawn mowers or snow blowers.
But the WMC lawsuit claims the DNR is not being entirely truthful with that statement.
"According to DNR, emissions from nonroad engines become
emissions from stationary sources (and thus emissions open for state regulation) when those engines are turned on and tested by manufacturers," the lawsuit explains. "Testing, however, does nothing to morph the classification of a source. Yet right now when testing nonroad engines—for quality control, for research and development, for whatever reason—Wisconsin manufacturers must
comply not only with EPA nonroad-source emissions standards but also with DNR stationary-source emissions standards"
The WMC says in its case that’s the exact kind of “double regulation” the Clean Air Act was written to avoid.
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