Enviros and industry fight feds in Supreme Court FOIA case

By Pamela King, E&E News, Oct. 30, 2020

Should the public have access to documents that show why the federal government changed its stance on the impact an EPA rule would have on vulnerable species?

That's the question the Supreme Court will set out to answer Monday in the case Fish and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club, which deals with a Freedom of Information Act request for documents underpinning a 2014 rule for cooling water intake structures at power plants.

At the heart of the battle is a draft biological opinion in which FWS found that a proposed version of the rule would jeopardize endangered species. EPA ultimately revised the rule, and FWS determined that the new version posed no harm.

But the Sierra Club will argue next week that the public has the right to know what changed.

Read more here.