Alabama challenging new EPA ozone rules in
court
Copyright 1999 Associated Press
January 25, 1999
Alabama and seven other states are challenging the
Environmental Protection Agency's strict new air pollution
guidelines, which seek to reduce ground-level ozone.
The lawsuit by the Alabama Department of Environmental
Management could affect
efforts by Huntsville and Mobile to avoid penalties under the new
standards.
Alabama is
among 21 states the
EPA has ordered to reduce ozone. The federal agency contends
windblown pollution
from the South and the Midwest is responsible for increasing ozone
levels in
Northeastern states, and that finding is being challenged in the
lawsuit.
"Certainly emissions in Alabama have some effects in
air quality anywhere in the
world," said Ron Gore, head of ADEM's air quality branch.
"But we think that effect falls off into insignificance very
quickly at roughly
the state borders."
While Birmingham has long fought
unsuccessfully to meet old standards for ozone emissions,
Huntsville and Mobile
are among cities targeted by the new guidelines.
For the last two years, Huntsville's ozone levels have been
above the new
EPA standards, which go back to 1997 and are judged in three-year
periods. So if
Huntsville's level exceeds the standards again this year, it would
be placed in
the
"nonattainment" category, like Birmingham or Atlanta.
Mobile and Huntsville are hoping to avoid being forced to
take drastic
measures, such as selling cleaner-burning gas and lowering industry
emissions
of nitrogen oxide.
Huntsville officials hope
EPA will classify the city as
"transitional nonattainment." That means the city has had
historically low ozone levels, below the
EPA's old threshold of .12 parts per million. Mobile also has
historically low ozone
levels.
Gore said Huntsville and Mobile probably would prefer that
ADEM had not filed
the suit.
"EPA uses the offer of that transitional status as a
lever to induce states not to
sue," he said.
"EPA's position is: Smog is not just a local problem,
it's a regional problem," said Danny Shea, Huntsville's
manager of natural resources and environmental
management.
"If you are just barely
above the standards (like Huntsville), regional reductions would be
enough to
lower your background ozone levels."
But there is a loophole, according to Kay Prince, chief of
the regulatory
planning section at
EPA's air branch in Atlanta. ADEM can submit regulations that
accomplish what
EPA wants,
while still challenging the rules. ADEM would have to submit the
regulations to
the federal agency by September, but wouldn't have to implement the
new rules
until May 2003.
Still, for Huntsville and Mobile to get transitional
status, the state must
adopt the rules and not force
EPA to use law to
achieve the reductions it wants, Ms. Prince said.
Once ADEM submits a statewide reduction plan, it could
submit attainment plans
for Huntsville and Mobile, detailing the cities' past ozone
history,
regulations and historical meteorological data.
While environmentalists have criticized ADEM for
spending money on research to disprove
EPA's wind-blown theory, Gore said the research could also help
reduce pollution in
Birmingham.
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