Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Legislation Would Impact Any Business that Requires Environmental Permits
The Maryland Chamber of Commerce will testify today in opposition to the Community Environmental Protection Act of 2009 (HB1053), which will be heard by the House Environmental Matters Committee.
The legislation would expand standing to federal standards, which provides that any organization (in state or out of state) can have standing regarding permitting and enforcement issues as long as one member has standing or is truly aggrieved. It would also give authority for citizen suits by an association and would allow standing regarding new and renewal permits.
The legislation, if passed, would impact any business that requires environmental permits to operate. In its current form the language of the bill is extremely broad and wide-reaching, and raises a number of concerns to the Chamber, including:
- Currently, judicial appeal opportunity under the Environment Article exists only for major permits. HB1053 creates judicial appeal rights for any administrative action, no matter how small. This includes thousands of permits and miscellaneous administrative determinations.
- HB 1053 contains broader standing principles than federal standing. The legislation creates an administrative appeal by anyone who submitted comments or suffered injury in fact, giving a person the right to raise issues for the first time on appeal without the agency being afforded the opportunity to rule on their issues. Federal law limits appeal to those who have participated at the administrative agency level on issues raised and determined by the federal agency.
- The legislation takes an extremely broad approach to standing, providing that any organization (in state or out of state) can have standing as long as one member has standing or is truly aggrieved. It would also allow any person to sue who alleges a negative impact, or even a threat of negative impact, allowing for persons with little to no justified grievance to appeal decisions.
The broad nature of HB 1053 could significantly delay or interrupt projects by substantially increasing the workload for an already over-taxed judicial branch, and undermining the decision-making authority of a local jurisdiction by persons with only generalized concerns. It could also impact the business/local government professional relationship in an undesirable and unnecessary manner.
For more information on the Community Environmental Protection Act of 2009, please contact Vice President of Governmental Affairs Allyson Black at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
