EPA Invents Perpetual Funding Machine

EPA Funds Green Groups That Sue The Agency To Expand

When the Environmental Protection Agency said in late June that it would force Western coal-fired power plants to install haze-reducing pollution-control equipment at a cost of $1.5 billion a year, it said it had to in order to settle a lawsuit by environmental groups.

One organization involved in the suit, the Environmental Defense Fund, has a long history of taking the EPA to court. In fact, a cursory review finds almost half a dozen cases in the past 10 years.

The odd thing is that the EPA, in turn, has handed EDF $2.76 million in grants over that same period, according to an IBD review of the agency's grant database.

This strange relationship goes well beyond EDF. Indeed, several environmental groups that have received millions in EPA grants regularly file suit against that same agency. A dozen green groups were responsible for more than 3,000 suits against the EPA and other government agencies over the past decade, according to a study by the Wyoming-based Budd-Falen Law Offices.

The EPA even tacitly encourages such suits, going so far as to pay for and promote a "Citizen's Guide" that, among other things, explains how to sue the agency under "citizen suit" provisions in environmental laws. The guide's author — the Environmental Law Institute — has received $9.9 million in EPA grants over the past decade.

And, to top it off, critics say the EPA often ends up paying the groups' legal fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act.

So, EPA gives money to the NGOs, who use the money to sue the EPA, which the EPA can then  defend themselves against incompetently, lose the suit, and get more money and more power to give the NGOs to sue the EPA with.

...the EPA settlement of a greenhouse gas emissions suit as a good example.

The suit, filed in 2008 by EDF, the Natural Resources Defense Council (which has received $6.5 million in EPA grants since 2000), the Sierra Club and several states, sought to compel the EPA to issue greenhouse gas "performance standards" for power plants and refineries. In its settlement, the EPA agreed to do that.

So EDF sues the EPA, and EPA gets the authority to regulate CO2 emissions!

Schweeeeet!