Northwest Environmental Advocates v. EPA

The federal district court for the Western District of Washington granted summary judgment to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and intervenor-defendants King County and City of Tacoma in a citizen suit filed in 2021 that asserted that EPA failed to perform a nondiscretionary duty to issue total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for the Puget Sound. Plaintiff Northwest Environmental Advocates alleged that projected increases in nitrogen pollution, combined with climate change, were expected to worsen dissolved oxygen levels in the Sound and that the State of Washington had failed to submit any TMDLs for nitrogen and dissolved oxygen depletion despite evidence of worsening problems. The court found that given the State’s submission of TMDLs in 2022 for Budd Inlet, an inlet to South Puget Sound, and the ongoing implementation of a nutrient reduction plan, the State had not “clearly and unambiguously decided not to submit Puget Sound dissolved oxygen TMDLs” and the court therefore could not conclude that the State had submitted no such TMDLs under the constructive submission doctrine.

Northwest Environmental Advocates filed a Clean Water Act suit in the federal district court for the Western District of Washington asserting that EPA had violated its duty to develop total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for the Puget Sound and that EPA’s approval of the Washington Department of Ecology’s “TMDL Alternative” was arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law. The plaintiff alleged that projected increases in nitrogen pollution, combined with climate change, were expected to worsen dissolved oxygen levels in the Sound and that Washington had failed to submit any TMDLs for nitrogen and dissolved oxygen depletion despite evidence of worsening problems. The complaint asserted that EPA’s failure to act on Washington’s constructive submission of no TMDLs was a violation of the Clean Water Act and that approval of the TMDL Alternative was “inconsistent with the [Clean Water Act] mandate to establish TMDLs for waters that violate water quality standards.”