WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency plans to release a contentious and long-awaited new limit on ozone pollution Thursday, and it's not likely to mark the end of the argument.
The EPA's final rule for ground-level ozone pollution, better known as smog, will set the standard at 70 parts per billion, lowered from the current standard of 75, according to sources briefed on the matter. Environmental and public health groups had been anticipating this figure for some time, though it is at the high end of what they had wanted. The EPA's announcement on the rules is expected to come Thursday afternoon.
Industry groups like the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute have asked the EPA not to lower the limit at all.
Nitrogen oxide and other volatile organic compounds emitted from factories, power plants and automobiles can cause the formation of smog. Exposure to high levels of ozone pollution can trigger respiratory problems, particularly in children, the elderly and people with lung conditions.
The agency's draft rule, released last November, suggested a limit somewhere between 65 and 70 parts per billion, though the agency also accepted comments on whether to reduce the limit to as little as 60 parts per billion.
The EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee recommended last year that the standard be lowered, and suggested that a limit of 70 parts per billion would provide "little margin of safety for the protection of public health, particularly for sensitive subpopulations." Setting it at the lower end of that range "would certainly offer more public health protection," the committee wrote.
The rule has been a subject of contention for years.
Under the George W. Bush administration, the EPA set the limit at 75 parts per billion in March 2008. Environmental and public health groups, joined by 11 state attorneys general, sued the Bush administration, arguing that the limit was too high. In January 2010, the EPA proposed lowering the limit to 60 to 70 parts per billion, but after months of delaying a final rule, President Barack Obama announced that he'd directed the agency to withdraw the ozone proposal as part of his efforts to reduce "regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty." Environmental and public health groups sued again, and a federal judge directed the EPA to produce a final rule by Oct. 1, 2015.
Public health groups like the American Lung Association have called for the standard to be set at the lower end of the proposed range. Representatives of the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the NAACP and the environmental law firm Earthjustice said in a conference call with reporters on Monday that a standard of 70 parts per billion would be unacceptable.
Seventy, said David Baron, managing attorney for Earthjustice, is "way above the level that doctors say we need to protect people from death, from hospitalization, from asthma attacks, from other serious health impacts. Setting the standard at 70 parts per billion would be nothing short of a betrayal of the Clean Air Act's promise."
There is "a good likelihood" that the groups will sue the EPA again if the standard is set at 70, Baron said.
The oil industry and manufacturers have argued against lowering the standard at all, claiming that compliance would be difficult and costly in many parts of the country. Some Democrats from Western states have also expressed concern about lowering the limit.
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