A King County Superior Court judge on Friday ordered the state Department of Ecology to complete by year’s end a new rule regulating greenhouse gases.
A King County Superior Court judge on Friday ordered the state Department of Ecology to complete by year’s end a new rule regulating greenhouse gases.
In a ruling from the bench, Judge Hollis Hill also said the state next year must come up with a legislative proposal for future emission reductions, according to Andrea Rodgers, a Western Environmental Law Center attorney who represents plaintiffs.
“She gave us everything we wanted,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers represents eight young climate activists, supported by Our Children’s Trust, who have waged a two-year legal battle aimed at stepping up state efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
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The current state targets call for a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 over 1990 levels. The plaintiffs contend that the best science should put the reduction target at 80 percent or more.
They filed a petition in 2014 seeking to force the state Department of Ecology to develop a rule to regulate these emissions and recommend updated targets to the Legislature. Then, when the department rejected that petition, they filed a lawsuit in court.
Last summer, the Department of Ecology announced a new clean air rule to regulate carbon emissions. A draft proposal was released in January, then withdrawn in February after criticism to be reworked.
The February withdrawal prompted the plaintiffs to go back to court.
An Ecology spokeswoman Friday acknowledged the judge’s ruling and said the department already has plans to have the rule in place well before year’s end.
“Our goal is to have a new proposal out in late May, and we’re striving to have this done by late summer,” said spokeswoman Camille St. Onge.