Texas Sues EPA over Ozone Standards
Texas is the latest state to file suit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its recently finalized standards for ozone.
The state joins Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wisconsin, which have legally challenged the final version of the EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone since its release on Oct. 1. The rule cuts the current limit of ozone emitted by power plants and other industries to 70 parts per billion (ppb) from 75 ppb.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement on Dec. 28 that the change would “impose a serious financial burden on the Texas economy for dubious public health benefit.”
“The EPA’s new ozone rule is not supported by scientific data,” Paxton said. “Areas of the country that fail to comply with these impossible standards will be subject to costly new regulations that will harm our economy and kill jobs. Texas has proven that we can reduce ambient ozone concentrations without stifling growth, and my office will continue to defend our state from the EPA’s harmful and overreaching regulations.”
On Dec. 23, meanwhile, environmental legal group Earthjustice—representing the Sierra Club, Physicians for Social Responsibility, West Harlem Environmental Action, Appalachian Mountain Club, and the National Parks Conservation Association—also filed suit to challenge the national standards.
The groups contend that the EPA’s standards are weaker than those recommended by medical experts. “The EPA set its new standards at the very weakest level it considered [70 ppb], despite findings by the agency’s science advisors that harms to health occur below this level, especially for vulnerable populations,” it said in a statement.
Though the groups contend that the 2015 standards are too weak, they are an improvement over the existing Bush-era standards, they said. As a result, Earthjustice representing several health and environmental groups last month filed court papers to oppose coal miner Murray Energy’s efforts to roll them back.
The Clean Air Act requires that the EPA set NAAQS for ozone and five other pollutants considered harmful to public health and welfare, and to review those standards every five years.
In 2010, the EPA proposed to implement a more stringent ozone standard than those set by the Bush administration in March 2008. That rule would have changed the cap for primary and secondary ozone standards, emitted during any eight-hour period, from 75 ppb to between 60 ppb and 70 ppb. But in September 2011, just before the rule was to be finalized, President Obama scuttled the so-called “smog rule” to reduce regulatory burdens and uncertainty for industry.
The agency’s new draft rule issued in November 2014 (the day before the Thanksgiving holiday) proposed to revise the standards to a range of 65 to 70 ppb and sought comments on a level as low as 60 ppb. The final ozone rule is significantly less strict, however.
—Sonal Patel, associate editor (@POWERmagazine, @sonalcpatel)