SACRAMENTO (AP) Gov. Gray Davis said Friday he will join other
states in suing the federal Environmental Protection Agency to make
sure the agency can't interfere with California's efforts to
control greenhouse gases.
The announcement comes the week after Davis and his Democratic
counterparts from Washington and Oregon laid out a plan to combat
global warming, and after the federal agency in August said it
lacks authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases from motor vehicles.
It follows Davis' signing of a law last year making California
the first state to restrict vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions.
The suit on behalf of Davis and the California Air Resources
Board won't be filed until at least later this month, and will
likely be just a brief petition to the federal appeals court in
Washington, D.C., said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Attorney
General Bill Lockyer.
But officials from Davis' Environmental Protection Agency and
Air Resources Board joined a deputy attorney general, the Sierra
Club and National Resources Defense Council in announcing the suit
four days before voters decide whether to recall the governor.
Leading the polls to replace him is Republican front-runner Arnold
Schwarzenegger, who made famous the gas-guzzling Hummer.
Davis' administration said the delay is to allow time to
coordinate with states it expects to join in a lawsuit, including
Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York,
Oregon, Washington and Vermont.
Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts sued the U.S. EPA in June
seeking to force the agency to add carbon dioxide to the list of
six pollutants that are regulated under the Clean Air Act.
Davis said global warming ``is vital to the future of our
state,'' potentially affecting California's agriculture, forests,
shoreline, and the Sierra snow pack that provides much of the
state's water and hydroelectricity.
In addition to deciding that greenhouse gases such as carbon
dioxide are not pollutants, officials said the broad language in
the U.S. EPA's decision suggests the federal government also
intends to block states from acting on their own to regulate
emissions.
``We don't think our decision would affect California's ... or
any other state's ability to regulate above the Clean Air Act,''
said U.S. EPA regional spokesman Mark Merchant.
``California is reading the Clean Air Act one way, and EPA is
reading the act another way, and California has decided to ask a
judge to decide which is correct,'' he said. ``California is within
its rights to do that.''
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)