Concerned Residents of Salem Township v. Stevenson

The Ohio Court of Appeals rejected appeals by a community group and its individual members of an Environmental Review Appeals Commission’s (ERAC’s) dismissal of challenges to a permit authorizing emission of air pollutants at a natural gas booster station. The court found that the appellants failed to satisfy notice pleading requirements when they raised two assignments of error before ERAC: (1) the permit’s emission limits and requirements did not take existing emissions into consideration and (2) the permit did not account for emissions from a neighboring compressor station and its inadequate limits would cause a public nuisance. To establish that they satisfied the notice pleading requirements for their public nuisance claim, the appellants cited portions of the record that mentioned, among other things, the adverse impacts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The Court of Appeals said the appellants’ statements were not sufficient to satisfy the pleading requirements, “as they amount only to a description of the detrimental effects of air pollution generally and within this specific community already plagued by the effects of another local facility” and did not set forth specific emission limits or permit conditions that would result in unreasonable risk of harm.