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.

House Hearing Highlights Partisan Splits on Specific Permitting Reforms

House Republicans’ efforts to highlight draft legislation limiting the scope of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews are showcasing continued partisan splits on specific permit streamlining policies, even as lawmakers also are expressing general support for reaching some legislative agreement on the issue. A Sept. 11 hearing by the House Natural Resources Committee on the draft bill served as an initial answer by House GOP leaders to the Senate energy committee’s passage in July of bipartisan legislation from Sens. Joe...

EPA Wins Criminal, Civil Fines In Device Case, Highlighting Coordination

EPA and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have won large civil penalties and criminal fines from a North Carolina company for unlawfully manufacturing, selling and installing “defeat devices” that disable truck emission controls, highlighting the enforcement office’s new policy aimed at better coordinating such efforts. According to an EPA spokesman, North Carolina-based Rudy’s Performance Parts, Inc. entered a guilty plea at a Sept. 10 hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and will pay a $2.4...

EPA Floats Tougher Air Toxics Rule For Tire Producers Ahead Of Deadline

EPA has sent its rule tightening air toxics standards for rubber tire manufacturers for White House pre-publication review, bringing the agency closer to release of the regulation that would add limits for hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) not originally regulated in the sector, but an industry association warns the plan is “unlawful” and “inappropriate.” EPA sent the rule modifying the National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for the sector to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB)...

EPA Agrees To Proposed Deadlines To Review Polyether Polyols Air Rule

EPA has agreed with environmentalists on deadlines to review and revise its air toxics rule for the polyether polyols production (PPP) sector, possibly removing “affirmative defense” provisions shielding industry from liability for malfunctions, and reconsidering emission limits in light of a tough 2016 assessment of ethylene oxide (EtO) health risks. In a Sept. 10 Federal Register notice , EPA announced the proposed consent decree deal that would settle Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), et al. v. Regan , a...

Environmentalists oppose industry intervention in SOCMI suit

Environmentalists are urging a federal appeals court to reject industry effort to intervene on EPA’s behalf in their challenge to the agency’s Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturing Industry (SOCMI) air toxics rule, saying their late request should be denied because the issues the environmentalists raised should not have come as a surprise. The environmentalists’ Sept. 6 opposition in Concerned Citizens of St. John, et al. v. EPA, et al. in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia...

EPA OKs L.A. Warehouse Indirect Source Rule, Paving Way For Other Areas

EPA is approving a novel “indirect source rule” (ISR) to reduce pollution from warehouses in California’s South Coast air basin as a state implementation plan (SIP) revision, potentially paving the way for other regions to adopt similar measures that target truck and other mobile source emissions in the absence of adequate federal rules. In a notice slated to appear in the Federal Register Sept. 11, EPA says it is approving the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s (SCAQMD) “Rule...

OIG urges EPA to beef up fraud training after failure to report incident

EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) is urging EPA Administrator Michael Regan to train his staff how to recognize and disclose fraud, after air enforcement agents missed fraudulent letters sent to the agency regarding a Clean Air Act national security exemption for certain engines that the employees did not report as fraud. That resulted in a U.S. Attorney’s Office declining to pursue criminal charges, and prompting the OIG and law enforcement agencies to close the investigation. The OIG lays out...

Biofuels Group Seeks Rehearing Of Key Appellate Ruling On RFS Waivers

Pro-ethanol trade group Growth Energy is asking an appeals court to rehear its landmark ruling that overturned EPA’s denial of dozens of small refiners’ requests for waivers from renewable fuel standard (RFS) biofuel blending mandates, claiming that the court “misapprehended” EPA’s position and the agency’s rulemaking record. Growth Energy in two Sept. 9 petitions asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for both panel rehearing and en banc rehearing of its rulings in two...

Fuels Groups, GOP States Detail Claims Against MY27-32 Auto Standards

The liquid fuels sector and Republican-led states are detailing their legal arguments against EPA’s multi-pollutant standards for model year 2027-32 vehicles, claiming the regulation violates the Supreme Court’s “major questions” doctrine and improperly includes electric vehicles (EVs) in the rule’s fleet averaging compliance mechanism. In addition, critics are spotlighting what they view as EPA’s flawed cost-benefit analysis for the rule, asserting the agency’s social cost of carbon (SCC) metric used to monetize climate-related benefits is arbitrarily weighted to support strict...

Environmentalists threaten EPA with suit over Valero permit

Environmentalists are threatening EPA with a lawsuit over its failure to deny or issue an air permit for oil company Valero’s Houston Refinery, after the agency missed a Clean Air Act deadline to act on the permit after earlier objecting to it on multiple grounds related to inadequate compliance measures. In their undated notice of intent to sue letter posted to EPA’s website Sept. 4, groups including Sierra Club and Environmental Integrity Project say they intend to sue the agency...

In SO2 Case, Texas Spars With EPA Over Reach Of High Court Rulings

Texas and industry groups are clashing with EPA over the effect of the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on judicial deference and the proper conditions for staying a regulation, as the agency continues to defend its decision placing part of the state in “nonattainment” with the 2010 federal limit for sulfur dioxide (SO2). Texas and allied industry groups are seeking rehearing by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit of its Jan. 11 split panel ruling in State...

EPA Seeks To Raise Profile Of Enforcement Against Illegal HFC Imports

EPA is issuing an “enforcement alert” to raise awareness of its major initiative for curbing illegal imports of climate-warming hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) amid a domestic phase-down of the chemicals under the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act, with the topic representing a key element in both the agency’s enforcement and climate strategies. The Sept. 6 alert “emphasizes that the EPA is vigorously enforcing the AIM Act, using civil and criminal enforcement authorities, to prevent the illegal import, production, sale, or distribution,...

IPI Urges Agencies To Embrace EPA’s SCC Metric Amid White House Delay

Correction Appended A progressive think tank is pressing federal agencies to use EPA’s updated social cost of carbon (SCC) climate damages estimates to inform an array of rules and other decisions, after the White House has stalled an effort by its interagency working group (IWG) to craft a unified federal metric and instead urged agencies to use values based on “professional judgment.” “Is there a need for another group to revisit [the social cost metric] at this time? Not...

Wood Heater Manufacturers Resist ‘Compressed’ NSPS Review Schedule

Manufacturers of wood stoves and similar devices are urging EPA to back out of a proposed consent decree deal with states that would set a “compressed” timetable for the agency to update its new source performance standards (NSPS) for the sector, saying a “rushed” approach would undermine the improvements in testing EPA is seeking. But state regulators and large emissions sources are supporting the proposed deal, saying it will help attain EPA’s strict new fine particle standards. The proposed decree...

Despite Stay, EPA Readies Possible Expansion Of GNP To Additional States

EPA has sent for White House review its final decision on whether to disapprove the interstate ozone plans of an additional five states and include them in its 23-state Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) program, even as courts have stayed its implementation in already-regulated states, in a test of the agency’s narrow view of the rule’s “severable” mandates. The final rule transmitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Sept. 4 would complete an action proposed by EPA in February...

Industry Seeks To Defend SOCMI Rule From Environmentalists’ Challenge

Industry groups are asking to intervene on EPA’s behalf to defend portions of a major air toxics rule that environmentalists believe are too lax, even as they are already challenging other provisions they argue are too stringent, though the groups’ request to intervene is coming after the normal deadline for such a motion. The American Chemistry Council, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, the Louisiana Chemical Association, the Vinyl Institute, Denka Performance Elastomer (DPE) and Huntsman Petrochemical filed an Aug. 27...

EPA Floats Novel, Narrow View Of Landmark SSM Ruling To Fault Texas Plan

EPA is proposing to reject a Texas air quality plan setting standards for facilities’ planned maintenance, startup and shutdown (MSS) events, detailing apparently for the first time a narrow reading of an appeals court’s landmark ruling that largely scrapped the agency’s “SIP Call” rule requiring states to strip similar regulatory measures from their plans. In a Federal Register notice published Sept. 3, EPA proposes to disapprove Texas’ modification to its state implementation plan (SIP) that would incorporate a series...

EPA Tightens Air Toxics Reclassification Rule But Punts On Major Issues

EPA’s just-released final rule tightening the conditions for “major” air toxics sources to reclassify as more lightly regulated “area” sources bars some facilities from doing so because of their “persistent” and “bioaccumulative” emissions, but also punts until a future rulemaking proposed “safeguards” designed to prevent backsliding in air quality. The rule , signed by Administrator Michael Regan Aug. 30 and unveiled Sept. 4, also backtracks on EPA’s proposal to make limits on plants’ potential to emit (PTE) pollutants “federally enforceable,”...


Industry, Environmentalists File Rival Suits Over Coke Ovens Air Rule

Industry and environmental groups have filed competing lawsuits over EPA’s recently tightened air toxics rule for coke ovens used in steelmaking, with industry groups expected to challenge the rule’s cost, feasibility and underlying legal basis, while environmentalists push for a tougher rule and criticize concessions EPA made to industry. Petitioners American Coke and Coal Chemicals Institute (ACCCI) and the Coke Oven Environmental Task Force (COETF) filed suit Aug. 30 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia...

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