Ozone Regulations Term paper

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In 1997 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established new ozone

standards. The EPA also placed special restrictions on twenty-two states in the

Ohio Valley and Midwest regions to prevent emissions from coal-burning power

plants from being carried into the New England States by wind currents.

(Tennessee is one of these twenty-two states.) Both of these rulings were

recently either struck down or placed on hold by Federal Appeals Courts. Why:

The regulations put into place in 1997 by the EPA were more restrictive than the

1990 standards. The regulations limit the amount of ground level ozone and fine

particle pollution permitted. Ground level ozone is produced by nitrogen

oxide(NOx) which is created by burning fossil fuels. Since gasoline and diesel

are both fossil fuels, then NOx is a major component of automobile emissions.

Several members of the trucking and fossil fuel industries, as well as members

of the twenty-two state region, have challenged the regulations in Federal Court

and have been successful in blocking the implementation of the new rules. In the

past two months, two separate Federal Court Of Appeals panels have ruled that

the EPA’s authority to establish clean air standards is not properly delegated

by Congress under the Clean Air Act. Therefore, since the EPA is a part of the

Executive branch of government and not the Legislative, they have no authority

to produce regulations on their own. The plaintiffs in the case also argued that

the amount of pollution a person can tolerate has not been established and until

it is the EPA should not make the current regulations more restrictive. How: The

main actors in this event are the American Trucking Associations and their

fellow plaintiffs, the twenty-two state coalition, the EPA, and the Federal

Appeals Court. Why would the American Trucking Associations and other fossil

fuel burning industries want to limit the EPA’s authority? What do they have

to gain? Last year, according to the EPA’s own press release detailing their

enforcement efforts in fiscal year 1998, the EPA referred 266 criminal cases to

the Department of Justice, as well as 411 civil court cases. Approximately half

of the civil cases required violators to change the way they manage their

facilities or to reduce their emissions or discharges. The EPA also assessed

almost $93 million dollars in criminal fines and another $92 million in civil

penalties. In addition to fines and penalties, polluters spent over $2 billion

dollars to correct violations. Not included in this estimate would be the legal

expenses incurred or the advertising and marketing costs required to mend a

damaged pubic relations image. Clearly it is in the industries’ best financial

interest if the regulations are less restrictive. Many companies that spent

large amounts of money to meet the 1990 Clean Air Act standards would have to

spend even more to meet the amended 1997 standards. Do the states in the

twenty-two state region have another reason to argue against the standards?

According to Sean Cavanagh’s article in the April 4, 1999 edition of the

Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Atlanta lost $700 million in federal roads money

as a result of failing to come up with a pollution containment plan. In

addition, the state of Georgia had to fund a state “superagency” to develop

and enforce transit plans that meet federal standards. The states joined the

industrial groups in claiming that the new standards are too strict and are

unnecessary. Chattanooga is not expected to meet the new requirements by the

year 2000 deadline and Chattanooga Mayor Kensey and Tennessee Governor Sundquist

were two of the public officials who protested the new standards as being too

strict. Are the new standards too strict? How does the EPA determine the

required levels? According to the press release issued by the EPA following the

court’s decision, the Federal Courts are not questioning “the science and

process conducted by the EPA justifying the setting of new, more protective

standards.” The EPA claims that their standards, which are designed to limit

the affects that smog and soot have on people with respiratory...

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