Ground Level Ozone Regulations Term paper

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What: 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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