The House voted Tuesday to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from adding new regulations on smog-forming ozone pollution before states have had time to comply with previously enacted air quality standards.
The House passed the bill 229-199 along party lines to “facilitate efficient state implementation of ground-level ozone standards.”
The bill is a direct challenge to the way the Obama administration updated the EPA’s ozone regulations in 2015, making them more strict before states had a chance to meet the previous 2008 standards.
The bill would direct the EPA to update the regulations every 10 years, instead of every five years to allow for the time required to meet the standards as they are updated under the Clean Air Act. It would also delay compliance with the current 2015 rules until 2025.
The bill simply says “give us a break,” said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Illinois, chairman of the environment panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It’s about giving states the “time to comply,” not about eliminating standards, he said.
Democrats opposed the bill as an attempt to roll back environmental regulations in favor of polluters. The GOP said the bill does not roll back the rules but seeks to reform an inefficient process.
Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., called for “opposition” against the measure, saying the ozone bill is a step in the wrong direction for the environment.
Tonko and other Democrats attempted to hold up the bill with a number of amendments. All of the proposed amendments to handicap the measure failed.
Shimkus said he wished the debate on the bill could have been more “amicable,” but “it was not.”
The 2015 ozone regulations have been a top concern for Republicans as well as business groups, the oil industry and manufacturers, who see the ozone regulations as detrimental to development and growth.
The regulations ratcheted down the allowable amount of ozone from 75 to 70 parts per billion, after considering even going lower to 65 ppb. The Obama EPA decided to lower the standard to 70 ppb, but the industry said it is still too stringent and would be nearly impossible to achieve without designating a number of urban centers nonattainment zones.
The GOP pointed out that the Obama EPA ratcheted down the standard in 2015 at the same time it published guidelines on how to comply with the previous 2008 standards, which no states had met. The bill seeks to change the Clean Air Act schedule for updating the regulations.
