Counties blast EPA air quality rule

Randy Johnson may have been tilting at windmills on his first trip to Capitol Hill as president of the National Association of Counties. Johnson, a commissioner from Hennepin County, Minn., was in Washington in late July to complain to a House Judiciary subcommittee about the new ozone and particulate matter (PM) standards imposed by EPA just weeks before.

“Needless to say, our member counties are disillusioned, dismayed and disappointed,” Johnson said. He urged the subcommittee to give strong consideration to HR 1984, which pushes back the ozone and PM implementation schedules four years to allow for more research.

Congress is expected to vote on that bill and its Senate counterpart, S 1084, sometime this fall.

The new ozone standard is .08 parts-per- million, down from .12 ppm. But “exceedences” will be declared only if a non-attainment area’s average reading for an eight-hour period is above .08 ppm. (Currently, the limit is any measurement above 12 ppm for any one-hour period.) Additionally, the current PM restriction is on particles below 10 microns in diameter, but the new standard, particles below 2.5 microns, is tighter.

The number of non-attainment areas would increase dramatically under the new standards. Under the current standards, there are 106 ozone and 41 PM10 non-attainment counties, based on 1993-1995 data. Weeks before EPA issued the July final rule with the tighter standards, it estimated that the number of non-attainment counties would rise to 280 for ozone and 150 for PM. Then, after the rule was published, EPA increased its estimates to 546 and 283, respectively.

Johnson said counties have made enormous efforts to comply with the current standards. But, he noted, “Instead of some recognition of accomplishment, the message sent by these new standards is that our efforts have been inadequate, inappropriate or ineffective. If we are to be required to commit significant additional resources to further reduce air pollution, we must be assured that these new investments will yield appreciable health benefits.”

Local governments and business groups, and, indeed, an EPA advisory committee, have serious doubts that the agency has produced adequate data to ensure that that will happen. Rep. Ron Klink (D – Pa.), who with Michigan Republican Fred Upton introduced HR 1984, says the work of the EPA-appointed Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee proves “the desperate need for more study of PM- 2.5 and the extremism of the new ozone standard.”

HR 1984 and S 1084, introduced by Sens. John Breaux (D – La.) and James Inhofe (R – Okla.), could pass both houses of Congress. But it is unlikely that either house has the votes to override an expected Clinton veto.

Barring passage of those bills, states would have to submit ozone and PM SIPs in 2003 and 2005. Cities and counties in non-attainment areas would then have to do such things as: purchase alternative fuel vehicles, use more expensive reformulated gasoline and impose driving restrictions and commercial development limits. (The federal government may help with some of those new costs.)

EPA’s final rule was not as tough as the original rule proposed in November 1996. For example, there is a new transitional classification for counties that take certain steps to reduce exposure to ozone.

EPA would go easy on them even if they did not meet the new .08 ppm, eight-hour standard. To qualify as a transition area, the state would have to meet certain criteria, such as submitting an ozone SIP three years early in 2000.