<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Thursday, March 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

GOP decries ozone proposal

Plan to cut smog would eliminate jobs, they charge

The Columbian
Published: November 28, 2014, 12:00am

WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers on Wednesday promised a vigorous fight against a new Obama administration proposal for reducing urban smog, saying tighter pollution standards would be a “disaster” that would destroy jobs and reverse the country’s economic momentum.

The GOP criticism came as White House officials announced details of the proposal to tighten restrictions on ground-level ozone, a pollutant linked to respiratory illnesses suffered by millions of Americans. An analysis released by administration officials projected that the new standards would prevent hundreds and perhaps thousands of premature deaths while yielding a net savings by reducing health costs.

“The science clearly tells us that ozone poses a real threat to our health, especially to growing children and older Americans and those of us with heart or lung conditions,” Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in announcing the proposal at a news conference.

The EPA proposal would lower the allowable ozone level from 75 parts per billion, set in the final years of the George W. Bush administration, to a new standard “in the range of 65 to 70 parts per billion,” McCarthy said. As part of the rulemaking process, the EPA will accept comment on a wider range of possible limits before adopting a final rule next fall.

But the plan came under immediate attack from Congress, as several high-ranking Republicans and a few Democrats joined industry groups in warning of severe economic consequences if the stricter standards go into effect.

“This proposal threatens to slam the door on new economic growth and job creation and stop our energy and manufacturing renaissance in its tracks,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He said President Barack Obama would be “doubling down on disaster” by imposing new ozone restrictions on states that are struggling to come into compliance with the current standards, adopted six years ago.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who will become chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee after Republicans take control of the Senate in January, said tougher ozone standards would force a halt in new manufacturing projects in his home state.

“I refuse to let the people of Oklahoma, and America more broadly, fall victim to EPA’s over-regulation and extreme environmentalist agenda,” Inhofe said.

The EPA faced a Dec. 1 court deadline to revise its standards for ozone, one of six pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act. Cities and counties that fail to meet the standard are required to take steps to improve air quality or risk losing federal highway money. But the law allows for considerable flexibility and long lead times — in some cases, decades — for states to try to come into compliance.

The EPA is required to review its air-pollution standards every five years and to revise them if new scientific research shows that tougher restrictions are needed to protect public health. The agency’s proposal, when finalized, would represent the first such change since 2008 for ozone, a respiratory irritant that forms when chemicals in factory smoke and automobile exhaust react in the presence of sunlight. Ozone is the primary component in urban smog and is linked asthmatic attacks and other respiratory ailments .

Loading...