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EPA Sets Stricter Standard for Ozone
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"The Environmental Protection Agency set a limit of 70 parts per billion for ground-level ozone."
Need to know-Sources of NOx and VOCs can be easily found in your house. For instance, gasoline vapors and chemical solvents.
EPA Sets Stricter Standard for Ozone
New limit on pollutant linked to smog draws criticism from industry groups, environmentalists
By AMY HARDER Updated Oct. 1, 2015 3:47 p.m. ET Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON—Environmental regulators significantly lowered a national limit for a smog-causing pollutant Thursday, in an attempted compromise that left some businesses relieved and environmental and health leaders upset the initiative wasn’t stronger.
The Environmental Protection Agency set a limit of 70 parts per billion for ground-level ozone, which is created by emissions released into the air by manufacturing plants, utilities and vehicles, down from the current level of 75 parts per billion. In a draft released in 2014, the agency proposed a standard between 65 and 70 parts per billion.
“I am relieved they didn’t go as far as they could have,” said Steve Staub, owner of Staub Manufacturing, a small company in Dayton, Ohio, that makes industrial products from raw metal. Mr. Staub, who founded his company 18 years ago and has 26 employees today, said a standard of 65 parts per billion would have been “unattainable for anyone in the manufacturing industry.”
Still, the move prompted criticism from business executives who didn’t want the EPA to change the limit at all, and from environmental and health groups that said it wasn’t tough enough.
Ozone is created by emissions such as nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. The ozone standard, mandated under the Clean Air Act, isn’t a direct regulation of business. But states must comply by curbing emissions from utilities, factories, refineries and other businesses and municipalities, often by requiring new pollution-control gear.“The level chosen…simply does not reflect what the science shows is necessary to truly protect public health,” said Harold Wimmer, chief executive of the American Lung Association, one of the groups that sued the EPA to issue the standard by Oct. 1. But he added that the new limit “offers significantly greater protection than the previous, outdated standard.”
Exposure to ground-level ozone can exacerbate respiratory problems, including asthma, and is particularly harmful to children and older people, health experts say.
The lower ozone limit is the latest action by the administration near the end of President Barack Obama’s time in the White House to address environmental and energy issues. Earlier this week, the EPA announced final rules setting first-ever national limits on toxic discharge from power plants and updated regulations on air emissions, including benzene, from oil refineries.
At the top of this agenda are climate regulations, which the EPA unveiled in August at a White House event with the president. Those rules aim to cut carbon emissions from power plants.
The ozone standard, though less high profile than Mr. Obama’s climate rules, is nonetheless controversial.
The EPA said the ozone limit will have a compliance cost of $1.4 billion a year by 2025, not including California, which has more time to comply due to its decadeslong air-pollution issues.
The agency said the standard would have annual public-health benefits valued between $2.9 billion and $5.9 billion. States have a range of time to comply, with many requested to do so by 2025.
Current law prohibits the EPA from considering costs of its actions, instead requiring the agency to look strictly at the latest science. Mr. Obama told business leaders last month he would ensure the public-health benefits outweighed the cost.
“We don’t issue a regulation where the costs are not lower than the benefits,” Mr. Obama said at a Sept. 16 meeting with the trade group Business Roundtable.
Mr. Obama, citing economic concerns, in 2011 rejected an earlier EPA proposal that would have set the ozone standard lower than the EPA did Thursday, at the time estimating compliance costs between $19 billion and $90 billion a year.
The EPA said an array of earlier air-pollution standards on factories, power plants and cars will help states meet the new ozone level. For instance, the 2007 air-emissions standard—in the news in regard to emission-rigging in Volkswagen’s diesel cars—was implemented in large part to help states meet a tougher ozone limit.
The EPA is issuing the final ozone standard by an Oct. 1 court deadline, compelled by a lawsuit brought by environmental and public-health groups, and after nearly a year of taking public comment on the issue.
Environmental and public-health groups have lobbied for a lower limit of 60 parts per billion.
Industry groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urged the administration not to change the limit set in the George W. Bushadministration.
“A more stringent regulation will negatively impact economic development over a much larger portion of the country, without delivering meaningful additional health benefits,” said Nick Akins,CEO of American Electric Power, one of the country’s largest utilities.
The EPA defended the move. “This strengthened standard will improve public health protection across the country and provide the adequate margin of safety that is required by law and that the science supports,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said.
Some areas of the country still aren’t complying with the 2008 standard, which business groups point to as a reason the EPA should hold off on a tougher limit. More than 90% of counties with ozone monitors are meeting a 75-parts-per-billion limit, according to an EPA spokeswoman.
The spokeswoman said the agency’s approximately 1,300 ozone monitors are placed in regions with large populations and economic development where smog forms the most.
Excluding California, the EPA said 14 counties out of the more than 3,000 in the U.S.—or less than 0.5%—won’t meet the new standard by 2025.
If a state isn’t meeting the standard it could face penalties, including loss of transportation funding, a point the Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups have argued could hurt the economy.
EPA officials say states don’t face that threat so long as they show they are trying to meet the limit. In the past 35 years, the agency has restricted the use of highway funds 11 times, according to EPA.
Write to Amy Harder at amy.harder@wsj.com
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