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.

Newsom Vetoes Bills Aimed At Easing CARB Harbor Craft, Truck Regulations

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has vetoed several bills that were sponsored by industry groups to ease state air board regulations requiring emission cuts from harbor craft and trucks, emphasizing that maintaining the rules’ stringency is key to reducing pollution in disadvantaged communities and fighting climate change. “While I recognize the challenges and concerns of adopting new technologies and approaches, Californians deserve and benefit from clean air and from the avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to our rapidly changing...

EPA Touts Refinery Settlement As Fenceline Monitoring Win Amid EJ Doubts

EPA is touting a recent consent decree agreement with an Ohio refinery as a win for its growing fenceline air monitoring program and its broader push to address the concerns of environmental justice (EJ) communities, but the deal comes amid doubts about the agency’s ability to actually address “cumulative” EJ concerns in regulation. Under the proposed settlement announced by EPA and the Justice Department (DOJ) Sept. 27, Lima Refining Company (LRC), located in Lima, OH, must pay a civil penalty...

Trade Groups Back GM’s Bid For En Banc Review Of Emission Cheating Suit

Several nationwide industry groups are urging the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit to take up litigation over alleged emissions cheating by General Motors (GM) and overturn a split three-judge panel’s decision allowing consumers’ suit against the auto giant to proceed in Michigan state court. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, and the National Association of Manufacturers filed a Sept. 26 amicus brief in Andrei Fenner, et al. v. GM, et al....

New EDF Data Shows Landfill Methane Almost Double Official Reports

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is releasing a new analysis the group says shows that landfills’ methane emissions are nearly double what has been officially reported to EPA, with the group arguing the data underscores the need for the agency to fulfill its pledge to strengthen air standards for the sector. In 2021, landfills reported emissions of roughly 3.7 metric tons of methane, under EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP). But EDF says satellite measurements suggest the sector’s actual emissions...

Denka Joins EPA’s Request To Resume Novel Air Enforcement Suit

Denka Performance Elastomer (DPE), the target of EPA’s novel Clean Air Act enforcement suit claiming “imminent and substantial endangerment” from the company’s chloroprene emissions, is agreeing with the agency that the case can resume after a months-long stay but says it still “strongly disagrees” that the issue is an “emergency.” DPE lays out its position in a Sept. 24 response to EPA’s motion to reopen the case, United States v. Denka, et al., which had been on hold in...

EPA Names New Members To CASAC, SAB Amid Closely Watched Reviews

EPA has announced new rosters for both its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) and broader Science Advisory Board (SAB), and a new chair of the influential CASAC -- Jeremy Sarnat, an associate professor of environmental health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. The shift, which EPA announced Sept. 27, comes as both bodies are in the midst of several high-profile projects including CASAC’s nascent review of the nationwide ozone air standard and SAB’s scrutiny of...

House biofuels backers renew push for permanent E15 sales

House lawmakers of both parties are joining Senate colleagues in a renewed push to authorize year-round sales of 15 percent ethanol fuel (E15), introducing a companion bill to existing Senate draft legislation that once again appears on track to fall short of the broad support needed for adoption. In their bill introduced in the House Sept. 27, Reps. Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Angie Craig (D-MN), along with Mariannette Miller Meeks (R-IA), Nikki Budzinski (D-IL), Dusty Johnson (R-SD) and Sharice Davids...

High Court Justices To Consider GOP State Petition To Block Climate Suits

Supreme Court justices are slated to consider a novel petition from Republican-led states seeking to block climate change nuisance suits that Democratic-led states have brought against oil majors, with the justices scheduled to consider the Alabama-led “bill of complaint” at their first conference of the new term on Sept. 30. The litigation, which one attorney has called “highly unusual,” asks the justices to rely on their “original jurisdiction” to oversee interstate disputes and halt the nuisance cases brought by five...

EPA Sends Proposal Rewriting Gas Plant Air Limits For White House Review

EPA has sent for White House pre-publication review its proposed rule tightening air emissions limits for large stationary combustion turbines such as those at gas-fired power plants -- advancing the first part of a broader package of measures that will seek to reduce conventional air pollutants and greenhouse gases from gas-fueled facilities. According to its website, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) received EPA’s proposed technology review of new source performance standards (NSPS) for stationary turbines on...

FHWA Strongly Defends EJ Analysis In Challenge To Capital Beltway Review

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is defending the environmental justice (EJ) analysis it conducted as part of a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review for an expansion of the Capital Beltway, urging a federal appeals court to reject environmentalists’ challenge and uphold a district court’s judgment allowing the project to proceed. The agency’s Sept. 16 filing in Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club, et al. v. FHWA, et al ., in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit,...

Citing Loper, Combustors Group Seeks To Unwind Key Air Toxics Precedent

Industry is pushing EPA to abandon a 2016 judicial precedent allowing it to set stringent air toxics standards by excluding emissions during periods of malfunction from its calculations, saying that ruling is no longer valid because it relied on the Chevron deference principle that the Supreme Court overturned in its landmark Loper Bright decision this summer. The 2016 decision, U.S. Sugar v. EPA , “is no longer good authority after the Supreme Court’s opinion in Loper Bright ,”...

EPA Report Weighs Opportunities, Barriers For NAM Use Across Programs

EPA has published a long-awaited report on how environmental statutes and its implementing rules allow -- or bar -- use of advanced toxicity testing methods known as new approach methods (NAMs) as alternatives to live-animal studies, advancing the agency’s long-pending “workplan” that aims to boost NAMs’ adoption at a host of programs. On Sept. 24, the agency released its review of “ Statutory and Regulatory Requirements ” that apply to vertebrate animal testing, and where they give “flexibility” to implement...

EPA Highlights Efforts To Target Municipal Landfill Methane, Reporting

EPA’s enforcement office is issuing two “enforcement alerts” to raise awareness of its efforts to curb air emissions from landfills including the potent greenhouse gas methane, an initiative that the agency says has heightened importance because landfills are the third-largest domestic source of methane. One Sept. 25 alert says EPA has found municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill operators “are failing to properly conduct compliance monitoring and maintenance of gas collection and control systems” and are “violating landfill gas emission rate...

Environmentalists Seek Stricter Haze Rule, Opposing Industry And States

Environmental groups are renewing a push for EPA to tighten its regional haze rule (RHR) ahead of the program’s third compliance phase targeted for 2029 despite an emerging push by industry and a long list of states to loosen it -- and after the agency already confirmed it intends to delay submission of states’ third-phase plans beyond a 2028 deadline. In comments submitted June 28 as part of EPA’s call for input on its planned reworking of the haze rule...

Phoenix, Industry Seek More Credit For Emission Cuts In Novel Air Plan

State and local officials in Arizona, backed by local business groups, are urging EPA to broaden its proposed approval of a novel Clean Air Act plan that would allow air pollution “offsets” from vehicles to facilitate growth of the semiconductor industry around Phoenix, as California officials eye a similar program. But the refining sector is strongly opposing the air plan for Maricopa County, AZ, which would promote electric vehicles (EVs) or hybrids, as unlawful under the Clean Air Act. An...

EPA Plans Program To Elevate Cross-Agency Action On Emerging Chemicals

EPA is planning to expand a pilot project into a full-fledged program in the coming fiscal year that elevates certain emerging contaminants for cross-agency action, although it currently has no plans to create a new standing office to take an agency-wide focus on the chemicals despite a recent recommendation from a panel of state waste regulators to do so. The agency, however, is continuing to review the recommendations in a report from the Association of State and Territorial Solid Waste...

EPA allows shift to electronic air reporting for several sectors

EPA plans to accept reports of air regulation compliance information in various electronic formats as soon as Sept. 25 for a broad swath of sectors that until now have still been required to submit paper reports -- its latest step in a long-term shift toward “streamlined” electronic reporting across the agency’s many clean air programs. In a Federal Register notice scheduled for publication Sept. 25, EPA announces its “allowance of the electronic submission of reports, notifications, or other required...

Steel Sector Touts End Of Chevron To Seek Stay Of Strict Air Toxics Rule

Steel companies are again urging the D.C. Circuit to stay EPA’s air toxics rule for the sector, arguing that the agency committed several technical errors and failed to show that new limits are “necessary,” and warning the court not to defer to regulators’ judgment on scientific or legal questions in light of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Chevron deference. In a Sept. 19 reply brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit...

States Urge EPA To Ease Regional Haze Mandates In Program Revisions

As EPA prepares to extend the submission deadline for state plans implementing the third phase of its regional haze program, Republican and Democratic-led states alike are urging it to also streamline and ease compliance in a pending rule revision, stressing the need for flexibility and reduced burdens -- especially once areas approach natural visibility conditions. In a series of comments posted quietly to EPA’s non-regulatory docket on the future haze program, an array of states including several that are often...

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