EPA chief aiming to curb settlements

WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt issued a directive Monday to constrain the type of legal agreements the EPA can reach with groups that are pressuring it to regulate.

In recent years, especially under former President Barack Obama’s administration, the EPA and other agencies resolved litigation over rule delays by agreeing to specific timelines to act and by reimbursing plaintiffs’ attorney fees.

Pruitt said he was taking action to ensure that consent decrees “are not used in an abusive fashion to subvert due process” and do not exclude the public from weighing in.

Pruitt said his action will not bar the EPA from reaching settlements with litigants but that he wanted to block any agreements “changing a discretionary duty to a nondiscretionary duty.”

He said it also was important to end the payout of attorney fees, since such settlements have “no prevailing party” and some payments are part of informal agreements that cannot be easily tracked.

The directive will provide for greater disclosure of potential settlements by directing the EPA to publish any notice of intent to sue within 15 days of receiving it; by reaching out to states and any other entities potentially affected by such suits; and by posting any proposed or modified consent decrees and settlements for a 30-day public comment period.

But environmentalists question whether Pruitt’s directive will have much of an effect. The Clean Air Act and other environmental laws provide citizens and outside groups broad latitude to sue the EPA when it is failing to meet statutory deadlines, and the judge handling such cases typically determines the amount of legal fees the government must pay.