On January 8, 2013, WLF urged the Environmental Protection Agency to reject a petition filed by a consortium of environmental activists seeking to subject the oil-and-gas extraction industry to onerous toxic release reporting requirements. The petition calls on EPA to interpret the law so as to allow EPA to aggregate multiple wells and supporting infrastructure as one “facility.” Such an approach, WLF explained, is not only unreasonable and contrary to the plain meaning of the term “adjacent,” but it runs afoul of at least one federal circuit which has rejected the very “interdependence” approach to adjacent sites urged by the petitioners. As explained by WLF, the petition also invites unnecessary federal intrusion into an area that the states and the industry are already busy addressing.
