Like other advocates in the area around industrialized northwest Indiana, Valerie Denney had no chance to weigh in before EPA in July unilaterally awarded regulatory compliance breaks to a handful of steelmakers and coke manufacturers.
This week, she was among the community and environmental representatives who pilloried agency officials for giving the two high-polluting industries more time to meet strengthened air toxics rules and for how they went about it.
“Delay, delay delay — that is a tactic that benefits industry, not people,” Denney, a member of a Gary, Indiana, community group who now lives in nearby Chicago, said Wednesday at one of two public hearings belatedly called after EPA granted integrated steelmakers and coke companies until 2027 to meet strengthened standards that were set to start taking effect as early as this year.
To make the schedule changes, EPA tapped a procedural tactic known as an “interim final rule,” or IFR, which sidesteps the statutory requirement to first provide the public with a heads-up on its plans and the chance to comment on a draft rule.
