EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin faces a looming deadline to make a pivotal call concerning the quality of air that millions of Americans breath.
In what is becoming a legal and bureaucratic cliffhanger, Zeldin must decide whether or not to take a legally required step launching enforcement of a tougher air pollution standard predicted to save thousands of lives.
Under a Clean Air Act timetable, Zeldin has until the end of next week to make the initial designations on parts of the country that are flunking the strengthened soot exposure limit put in place two years ago during the Biden administration. That in turn would start the clock for states to turn in long-term cleanup plans to bring failing areas into compliance.
Under President Donald Trump, EPA now labels the Biden-era standard a mistake and wants a federal appellate court to throw it out. As of Friday, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had yet to rule.
An EPA spokesperson declined to comment on Zeldin’s plans, citing the pending litigation. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is already urging him to delay decisions and a group of state air pollution regulators has noted that EPA could take another year on the grounds that more information is needed.
“We hope the Administrator will pursue an extension of attainment designations,” Brandon Farris, executive vice president at the Steel Manufacturers Association, said in a statement Friday to POLITICO’s E&E News.
The association was among 17 trade groups that signed on to a recent letter praising Zeldin’s decision “to correct an unlawful rule and one that threatens significant economic consequences nationwide.”
An industry coalition also recently challenged the accuracy of some of the monitors used in determining compliance with the stricter soot standard.
EPA’s apparent lack of movement is meanwhile alarming some lawmakers and environmental groups.
“The area designations are key to ensuring that all people in the country can breathe clean air,” Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and seven other Democratic senators said in a letter to Zeldin last week seeking answers to specific questions on their status.
As of Friday morning, Zeldin had not replied, according to a spokesperson for Blunt Rochester.
“They have a legal duty to do this,” Seth Johnson, an Earthjustice attorney helping to represent environmental groups in the D.C. Circuit litigation, said in an interview. EPA had previously estimated that the tighter limit would save up to 4,500 lives in 2032 alone, when it is supposed to be fully in effect. “These designations are vital for making sure that this standard is met,” Johnson said.
Soot is more technically known as fine particulate matter or PM2.5 because single droplets or specks are no bigger than 2.5 microns in diameter or one-thirtieth the width of a human hair. Long-term exposure is associated with a litany of ills, including a higher risk of lung cancer, heart attacks and premature death.
Direct and indirect sources under human control are closely tied to fossil fuels: They include coal-fired power plants, diesel exhaust and oil refineries.
During President Joe Biden’s term, EPA in 2024 tightened the annual exposure standard from 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 9 micrograms under a statutory requirement to protect public health with an adequate safety margin. That decision followed what was formally dubbed a “reconsideration” of the agency’s finding during Trump’s first term that no change to the earlier standard was warranted.
Costs and compliance designations
Industry foes and Republican-leaning states say that the 9 micrograms limit is so close to naturally occurring “background” levels that it will thwart permitting for major new industrial projects.
“As industry warned the Biden EPA, very few areas nationwide have the headroom to meet a revised standard of 9 while still accommodating the new manufacturing investment the economy urgently needs,” Farris said.
After first planning to roll back the tighter standard through a replacement regulation, EPA abruptly changed tactics last November by instead asking the D.C. Circuit to vacate it by Feb. 7, when the attainment designations are due.
As part of the rationale, agency lawyers cited the “extraordinary” compliance costs expected from the standard’s implementation.
Most states, however, have already outlined the areas they believe are failing the 9 micrograms standard. Those recommendations, submitted to EPA last year, suggest a more limited — albeit significant — effect, according to records obtained by E&E News under the Freedom of Information Act.
Many states say they are already fully in compliance, while even a Rust Belt industrial stronghold like Ohio deemed only two areas out of attainment.
Overall, more than 75 million people, or about 22 percent of the United States’ population, live in areas not meeting the standard, Earthjustice found in an analysis released late last year.
While monitoring data shows that Houston and at least several other parts of Texas are among them, Abbott refused to forward those findings to EPA early last year. The agency has thus far offered no public pushback. EPA has also not sent states notifications that were due in early October, Blunt Rochester and the other senators wrote last week.
In a letter early last year, the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies, which represents state and local regulators mostly in Republican-led states, reminded Zeldin that he has the option of taking up to one more year to make the compliance designations.
EPA “ought to give due consideration to the designations timeline and provide adequate time for atainment/nonatainment designations to be made with the best available data,” Morgan Dickie, the association’s executive director, wrote in the letter.
In a Friday email, Dickie said the association has received no indication of EPA’s plans.
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