The Environmental Protection Agency sent a proposed rule to limit smog to the White House on Wednesday, a move that will set off fresh battles in what has been an intense, five-year fight over the regulation.
The EPA is under legal obligation to propose the pollution rule under the Clean Air Act since ozone, a contributor to smog — which is linked to respiratory and heart ailment — falls under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards provision and must be reviewed every five years. The EPA is several years late, and a federal court ordered it to propose the standard by December and finish it by Oct. 1, 2015.
Industry officials and Republicans have fought the ozone proposal for several years, saying it has the potential to become one of the agency’s costliest regulations. They say it would force factories, power plants and other large industrial emitters to close, reducing gross domestic product $3.4 trillion between 2017 and 2040, according to a NERA Economic Consulting study that was commissioned by the National Association of Manufacturers.
Supporters of the standard, though, say that former President George W. Bush’s administration in 2008 offered too weak a standard to protect public health. Reducing the allowable amount of ozone would save billions of dollars in healthcare costs and save lives, public health and environmental groups say.
The lobbying around the proposal became so fierce ahead of President Obama’s re-election that the White House in 2011 told then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to shelve the proposal. The EPA had recommended tightening emissions standards to an allowable amount of ozone to range between 60 and 70 parts per billion, down from the 75 parts per billion approved under Bush.
The jockeying over that figure has become heated, with Republicans and businesses increasingly attacking the EPA’s scientific review processes.
The agency’s independent Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee originally recommended a more stringent level than what the Bush administration approved. That panel had said 60 to 70 parts per billion best protected the public health.
While the details of the current EPA plan are not known, the panel recently suggested that the higher bound of the EPA’s original smog range may no longer be sufficient.
“Although a level of 70 ppb is more protective of public health than the current standard, it may not meet the statutory requirement to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety,” the advisory committee said in a June letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.
