EPA Delays Ozone Standard Reconsideration for Fourth Time

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Tuesday it would not issue a reconsideration of the Bush administration’s ozone standard by the July 29 deadline, but it will finalize the standard “shortly.”

The White House Office of Management and Budget is examining the proposed reconsideration of the Clean Air Act health standard for ground level ozone. “Following completion of this final step, EPA will finalize its reconsideration, but will not issue the final rule on July 29, the date the agency had intended," EPA spokesperson Brendan Gilfillan said in a statement.

Gilfillan said, however, that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is “fully committed to finalizing” the EPA’s reconsideration of the Clean Air Act health standard for ground level ozone.

It was the fourth time the agency delayed the smog standards, which had been originally slated to be finalized last August. The announced delay comes amid criticism that the EPA is rushing reconsideration of a rule issued in 2008. The Clean Air Act mandates reexamination of the rule every five years; the next one is due in 2013.

The new ozone standard will be based on the “best science and meet the obligation established under the Clean Air Act to protect the health of the American people,” he said. “In implementing this new standard, EPA will use the long-standing flexibility in the Clean Air Act to consider costs, jobs and the economy," he said.

The Bush administration in 2008 set the ozone standard at 75 parts per billion. The EPA could set the ozone standard to 60 to 70 parts per billion, sources say.

Business leaders have complained that the EPA’s new standards could mean that up to 85% of counties currently monitored by the agency would fall into “nonattainment” status, forcing them to install controls. The EPA has said that the standards could cost from $20 billion to $90 billion annually.

“The Business Roundtable welcomes the administration’s desire to engage in a retrospective analysis of regulatory burdens that could aid U.S. competitiveness,” wrote John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, a trade association representing CEOs of major U.S. companies in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

“But the EPA’s onerous new ozone regulations would wipe out any progress that’s been made. The case for restraint remains strong. Not only is the economic recovery stumbling (witness the dismal 9.2% June unemployment rate), air quality has been steadily improving without additional mandates. According to the EPA’s own data, between 1990, when the Clean Air Act underwent it last major revision, and 2008, emissions of six common pollutants, including ozone, were down 41%.”

Sources: POWERnews, EPA, The Wall Street Journal