Air

Tracking the latest agency and congressional debates over rules to cut emissions of traditional pollutants, and a broad range of novel EPA policies including the agency's shift to a "multipollutant" regulatory approach for individual sectors.

Topic Subtitle
Tracking the latest agency and congressional debates over rules to cut emissions of traditional pollutants, and a broad range of novel EPA policies including the agency's shift to a "multipollutant" regulatory approach for individual sectors.

EPA poised to release tougher steel sector air toxics rule

EPA is poised to soon release its rule tightening air toxics limits for integrated iron and steel plants after the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) completed review, as the agency runs up against a judicial deadline to sign the regulation and industry and lawmakers of both parties push back against its tougher requirements. OMB completed prepublication review March 8, according to its website, clearing a path for Administrator Michael Regan to sign the rule by a March...

Texas Challenges Methane Emissions Rule, With More Pushback Expected

Texas officials have filed litigation challenging EPA’s oil and gas sector methane emissions rule, in what sources say is likely to be one of several bids from the sector or Republican states to seek either court review or agency reconsideration of the sweeping regulation. The March 8 petition for review from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, does not outline the state’s legal arguments, but it was...

Texas Urges EPA To Codify Guide On Wildfire ‘Exceptional Events’ Claims

Texas is seeking to formalize the process by which EPA prioritizes processing of states’ requests for “exceptional events” waivers from federal air standards, asking the agency to enshrine draft guidance as a rule that would set deadlines for EPA decisions on how much evidence states need supply and would bar EPA from reversing such decisions. In comments submitted to EPA ahead of a March 7 deadline for public input, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) like other state regulators...

EPA seeks new CASAC members ahead of NAAQS reviews

EPA is recruiting members for its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) ahead of upcoming statutory reviews of health-based air quality limits for nitrogen oxides (NOx), lead and ozone, after an intense period of activity for the panel that oversaw reviews of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone, and combined ‘secondary’ air standards. In a Federal Register notice published March 4, EPA seeks nominations for experts to serve on the seven-member chartered CASAC that advises the administrator on setting national...

Democratic Senators, Industry Press EPA To Ease Steel Sector Air Rules

Democratic senators are again pressing the Biden administration to walk back EPA’s plans to tighten air toxics limits for the steel sector, echoing industry and union warnings that a suite of regulations affecting steel plants will harm the industry and hamper the president’s goals to boost infrastructure and manufacturing and to fight climate change. In a March 4 letter , Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Bob Casey (D-PA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), John Fetterman (D-PA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) wrote to President...

Fearing Adverse Precedent, States Warn EPA Over Plan To Reject L.A. SIP

California and other state and local officials are warning EPA not to finalize its proposed disapproval of a state implementation plan (SIP) revision for the Los Angeles area to meet 1997 ozone standards, charging it would set an adverse precedent by requiring permitting offset sanctions and loss of federal highway funds. The “ramifications of the proposed disapproval of the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s [SCAQMD] Contingency Measure Plan are vast, as the proposed disapproval has the potential to result...

CARB Seeks Stay Or Dismissal Of Railroads’ Claims Over Locomotive Rule

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is urging a federal judge to either dismiss the railroad industry’s remaining claims challenging the board’s rule requiring emissions cuts from existing locomotives or stay the case until EPA acts on the board’s pending Clean Air Act (CAA) request for authorization to enforce the rule. Until “EPA acts on CARB’s pending authorization request, there is some uncertainty about which congressionally authorized path is at issue for which of the Regulation’s provisions,” CARB attorneys...

House Republicans Step Up Opposition To EPA’s Tough New PM NAAQS

House Republicans are stepping up their opposition to EPA’s tough new air quality standard for fine particulate matter (PM2.5), advancing legislation that would broadly curb future agency decisions to tighten such standards and offering a resolution to rescind the new standard -- though prospects for both appear dim in the current Congress. At a House Energy & Commerce environment subcommittee markup March 6, the panel voted along party lines to advance a draft bill, the “Air Quality Standards Implementation Act...

OIG warns EPA of ‘significant’ cybersecurity vulnerabilities

A new report from the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) says the Central Data Exchange (CDX), the online portal for data collection and reporting under several environmental statutes, has “significant” security gaps that could allow unauthorized access, though the agency is disputing many of those findings. OIG’s March 5 report , “Lack of Vulnerability Remediation for Weaknesses Identified Within the Central Data Exchange System Increases the Risk of Cyberattacks,” details what the watchdog office says were two “high-risk” and...

Large Coalition Of States Sues EPA To Overturn Tougher PM NAAQS

A coalition of two dozen states -- 22 led by Republicans and two by Democrats -- is suing EPA to scrap the agency’s recently strengthened national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5), in which EPA significantly toughened a key annual health-based limit for the pollutant. The states filed suit at the first opportunity March 6 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the same day EPA published the rule in the...

EPA Science Assessment For Airborne Lead Seen Bolstering New Rules

EPA’s most-recent update to its science on health and environmental effects of airborne lead helps build the case for tougher regulation of lead in multiple media, as the agency seeks to reduce exposures in air, water and soil, public health advocates say, even as the update does not depart radically from prior findings that identify no safe level of the metal. In its final integrated science assessment (ISA) released in January, and announced in the Federal Register last month,...

EPA set to publish PM NAAQS rule, starting clock for litigation

EPA is scheduled to publish its rule tightening national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the Federal Register on March 6, starting a 60-day deadline for court challenges to the regulation -- which has been broadly attacked by industry groups and GOP lawmakers, but supported by public health advocates. The agency released a prepublication version of its Register notice on March 5, almost a month after its Feb. 7 announcement of the NAAQS rulemaking...

Despite Broad Definition, EPA Caps ‘Dry’ Ports Grants, Riling Advocates

Despite allowing so-called “dry” ports to qualify for funding under its Clean Ports initiative, EPA has capped their available grants at 8 percent of the $3 billion program, a move that is riling environmental justice (EJ) advocates but is winning praise from the traditional port sector, which sought to bar such intermodal facilities from accessing any of the funds. Dry ports are far more numerous than seaports and are almost always located in EJ communities and should be eligible for...

EPA Launches First AIM Act Criminal Case For Illegal HFC Imports

EPA and other agencies are launching their first criminal prosecution for smuggling climate-warming hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) used in refrigeration and other sectors, offering the latest indication that the agency is taking a tough approach to enforcing the 2020 HFC control law. “This is the first time the Department of Justice [DOJ] is prosecuting someone for illegally importing greenhouse gases, and it will not be the last,” promised U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath for the Southern District of California in a March 4...

Health Advocates Urge Faster, Broader Expansion Of Good Neighbor Plan

Public health advocates are urging EPA to include more pollution control measures in its proposed expansion of the Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) rule to limit interstate ozone transport, such as steps to control oil and gas drilling emissions, and to implement the expansion faster, even as the Supreme Court could soon halt the program entirely. At a virtual public hearing March 4, EPA heard testimony from public health and environmental groups that support its Jan. 23 proposal to expand the...

EPA reaches deal to act on western states’ air plans

EPA has reached a proposed consent decree to take overdue final action approving or disapproving a wide range of measures submitted by Arizona, Colorado and Utah under their state implementation plans (SIPs) for meeting national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for ozone, particulate matter (PM) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). The proposed agreement , scheduled for publication in the Federal Register March 5, would settle litigation brought by environmentalists in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California...

EPA Delay Of Existing Gas Plant GHG Standards Faces Many Questions

Even as EPA’s move to delay writing greenhouse gas standards for existing natural gas-fired plants appears to be an attempt to shore up the foundation of its rule for coal plants and newly built gas plants, a wide variety of observers are raising questions about the agency’s pledge to write follow-up pollution requirements for existing gas-fired plants. Removing this category of sources from EPA’s proposed power plant GHG rule would reduce about 20 percent of the proposed rule’s projected GHG...

Senators float bill for RFS credit for ship fuel

Sens. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have introduced a bill aimed at expanding the market for biofuel by awarding renewable fuel standard (RFS) compliance credits for biofuel used in ocean-going ships., as shipping companies seek solutions to reduce their carbon emissions using various technologies. Currently, compliance credits known as renewable identification numbers (RINs) are available for motor fuels, heating oils and jet fuel derived from biomass. But allowing RIN generation for ship fuel would provide another outlet for...

D.C. Circuit Largely Revokes EPA Bar On SSM Waivers In State Air Plans

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has dealt EPA and environmentalists a major blow by largely vacating the agency’s “SIP Call” rule that ordered states to remove regulatory waivers for excess air emissions during periods of plant startup, shutdown and malfunction (SSM) from their air quality plans. In a long-awaited March 1 decision in Environmental Committee of the Florida Electric Power Coordinating Group, Inc., v. EPA, et al., the court...


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