EPA Delays Air Pollution Rule

EPA says it will delay a new rule under the Clean Air Act to fight ground-level ozone, the primary ingredient in smog, until July 2011 because it intends to seek additional advice from a scientific panel. The agency had been scheduled to issue a final air quality standard for ozone, which has already been postponed twice, by the end of the year. In 2008, the George W. Bush Administration tightened the standard from 84 ppb to its current level of 75 ppb. But the Obama Administration decided to reconsider the rule after activist groups mounted a legal challenge, charging the Bush-era ozone standard does not adequately protect public health. In January, EPA proposed setting the standard between 60 and 70 ppb, which is in line with a recommendation made by its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. EPA plans to ask the committee for “further interpretation of the epidemiological and clinical studies” it based its recommendation on, the agency says. Separately, EPA says it will reconsider a provision in another Clean Air Act rule that requires small chemical manufacturers to obtain operating permits if they are considered to be “area sources”—facilities that emit less than 10 tons per year of a single hazardous air pollutant or less than 25 tons per year of any combination of air toxics.