EPA Defends Use Of De Minimis Permit Thresholds In Denver Refinery Suit

EPA is fending off environmentalists’ legal attacks on its approval of a Colorado air permit for the Suncor Energy refinery outside Denver, defending the permit’s reliance on widely used screening levels known as Significant Impact Levels (SILs) to discount de minimis emissions and citing a recent ruling in another appellate court that upheld their use. In its brief filed May 31 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) v. EPA,...