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On
Friday, 6 June, attorneys for the Airport Communities
Coalition filed a petition (Adobe
Acrobat file 270K) in the Supreme Court
of Washington, challenging the Port of Seattle's “dirty
fill bill” enacted in the regular session of
the Legislature.
The
petition asks the Court to enter an order forbidding
Tom Fitzsimmons, Director of the Department of Ecology,
from relying on the legislation.
Under
some circumstances, the State Constitution allows lawsuits
against State officers to be brought in the Supreme Court
itself, when the legality of their official acts is challenged. The
petition argues that the bill is illegal—for three
different reasons—and so it would be unlawful for
Ecology to rely on it.
The
legislation is illegal, according to the petition, because
1)
It interferes with pending litigation in violation of
the fundamental principle of separation of powers. Legislatures
are not allowed to decide individual lawsuits—and
that is the desired result of the dirty-fill bill.
2)
The bill is special-interest legislation, designed to
aid just one party in one special set of circumstances—another
type of legislation that is forbidden by the Constitution
of the State.
3)
The bill subverts a part of the federal Clean Water Act,
and in this instance, Federal law overrides State law.
Port
PR people immediately claimed that this lawsuit was “another
stalling tactic”, an odd comment, given that there
are two other lawsuits still pending, and given the certainty
that the Supreme Court will deal with this petition very
promptly—at least as promptly as the Port’s own
appeal to the Court from the decision of the Pollution
Control Hearings Board. And, of course, this new lawsuit
would not be necessary if the Port had not tried a legislative “end
run” to avoid the conditions laid down by the Pollution
Control Hearings Board. Why not just use clean fill for
the runway, as the Board ordered?
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