More on a New Ozone NAAQS: EPA's Clean Air Science Advisory Committee Endorses EPA's Proposed Range
EPA has proposed lowering the NAAQS to a range of from 0.060 ppm – 0.070 ppm. Earlier this week, EPA’s Clean Air Science Advisory Committee, or CASAC, met and endorsed EPA’s proposed range. Some CASAC members did express concern about EPA’s proposed secondary seasonal standard, intended to protect crops and forests. However, overall, the CASAC seal of approval is pretty much the end of this argument.
It is important to recall how we got here. CASAC already endorsed the 0.060 ppm – 0.070 range several years ago, before EPA’s last ozone standard was issued. It was EPA’s refusal to follow the CASAC recommendations, and instead propose a 0.075 ppm standard, which led to litigation challenging the standard and the current controversy.
It is difficult to overstate the weight given the CASAC’s views. Indeed, EPA’s fine particulate standard was vacated in significant part because EPA failed to follow CASAC’s recommendations.
Thus, a standard that does not comport with CASAC’s recommendations would likely be rejected by the courts as arbitrary and capricious. However, I suspect that CASAC’s influence also runs the other way. Assuming that EPA does indeed promulgate a revised NAAQS in the 0.060 ppm – 0.070 ppm range, and assuming that industrial interests challenge the new standard, it will be very difficult to establish that the new standard is arbitrary and capricious if it has been endorsed by CASAC.
As I noted in connection with the fine particulate standard, it’s not obvious to me that this is a good thing. Depending on whose ox is being gored, anyone can get up on a soapbox and say that they want science to be free of politics. However, these are really policy decisions. It’s one thing to acknowledge that these are complicated issues and we thus have to allow Congress to delegate its authority to the EPA administrator. It’s another effectively to delegate the decision further to the CASAC, which is about as obscure an acronym body as we have. Do we really want standards which will result in compliance costs in at least the tens of billions of dollars being made by groups which truly are not accountable in any meaningful way?
Another Loss For the Bush EPA; The D.C. Court of Appeals Remands the Fine Particulate Standard
The batting average of the Bush administration EPA in appeals of its regulatory proposals may now have dropped below the proverbial Mendoza line. This week, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia remanded a substantial part of EPA’s particulate rule. That the Bush administration could achieve results where the Mendoza line is even a close metaphor is a testament to just how low its stock has fallen in the courts.
The case itself is important for a number of reasons, but is too lengthy for detailed analysis here. Highlights include:
· First, the basic holding: the court remanded EPA’s primary annual standard for PM2.5, because EPA did not justify that the 15 ug/m3 standard was sufficient to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety. Second, the court also remanded EPA’s determination of the secondary, public welfare, standard for PM2.5.
· The court gave great weight to the role of the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee (CASAC) and staff recommendations in the regulatory process. After this decision, EPA is going to think twice about choosing a regulatory course difference than that recommended by CASAC and staff. On balance, I think that this is a bad thing and more evidence of the collateral damage from the extreme positions taken by the Bush administration. After all, while the Clean Air Act sets some boundaries, these are ultimately policy decisions that should be made by the President and his or her chosen staff, not by a committee no one’s heard of or low-level staff.
· Unlike the chaos created when the court vacated the CAIR regulations, the court appears to have learned its lesson. This time around, the court remanded the rule, but left the standard in place for now.
· The court’s decision to remand the public welfare standard will have implications for current efforts to implement the its Regional Haze Rule. The extent to which this decision throws Haze Rule implementation back to the drawing board may not be known for some time.
How many more cases can the Bush administration lose after it’s already out of office? At least one. Greenwire reports today about speculation that this decision means that the EPA rules regarding the nitrogen oxide NAAQS may also be in trouble.
The interesting question in all this is the extent to which the abysmal record of the Bush EPA in defending its decisions in the courts will damage EPA’s credibility and thus result in a long-term weakening of the deference given EPA by the courts. At this point, my assumption is that, in the long run, these cases will be seen as an aberration and courts will resume their prior practice of granting EPA substantial deference. Of course, whether that is a good thing or not is a separate question.
