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andrew wheeler
Stronger EPA Soot Standards Called an Overdue 'Step Toward Cleaner Air'
"Even with these new protections in place, too many people's health will still be at risk from dangerous exposures to PM2.5," one expert said.
Feb 07, 2024
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Wednesday that it had finalized tougher standards on soot, or fine particulate matter pollution, one of the deadliest types of air pollution.
In a move largely applauded by environmental and public health groups and protested by industry, the EPA said it was strengthening the national ambient air quality standard for soot from an annual limit of 12 micrograms per cubic meter to nine micrograms per cubic meter, which—according to the agency—would prevent as many as 4,500 early deaths each year.
"This final air quality standard will save lives and make all people healthier, especially within America's most vulnerable and overburdened communities," EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan
said in a statement. "Cleaner air means that our children have brighter futures, and people can live more productive and active lives, improving our ability to grow and develop as a nation."
Fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) kills almost 50,000 people in the U.S. every year and led to 4.2 million early deaths worldwide in 2019. It is released primarily by the burning of fossil fuels by factories, power plants, and vehicles and causes health problems like respiratory ailments, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. It is also a major environmental justice issue, as low-income communities of color tend to experience a higher pollution burden.
"Particulate matter pollution is deadly, especially for children and older Americans. The Biden administration's new air quality standards will save thousands of lives and help address unjust disparities in air quality for communities of color and low-income communities," Patrice Simms, Earthjustice's vice president of litigation for healthy communities, said in a statement. "We applaud EPA for issuing a rule that will help reduce heart disease, asthma, and other serious illnesses. We look forward to EPA's implementation efforts, which must include robust enforcement and rigorous monitoring."
The World Health Organization has set its annual target for PM2.5 to five micrograms per cubic meter and its 24-hour target to 15. It calculates that 99% of people on Earth breath air that exceeds its health limit for several pollutants including PM2.5. Despite this, the EPA has not updated its PM2.5 standards since 2012.
"It's shameful that, in the face of such clear and compelling evidence of the public health and economic benefits of stronger soot standards, big polluters and their allies in Washington do everything in their power to undermine these commonsense air pollution standards."
The Clean Air Act requires the agency to review the science and decide whether or not to update the standard every five years. However, while the EPA under former President Donald Trump did complete an assessment, it chose not to strengthen the standards in December 2020. Its own scientists concluded that lowering the safety limit from 12 to nine micrograms would decrease yearly deaths by 12,150, but various industry groups urged the administration not to make any changes, according to The New York Times. Trump EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler also dismissed an outside group of expert scientists who were consulting on the measure. In response, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reassembled the panel in 2019. The experts concluded that the EPA should raise its standards to protect public health.
"The delays in updating this standard come at a steep cost, and lingering pollution impacts are too often borne by communities of color and low-income communities already facing disproportionate cumulative pollution burdens," Chitra Kumar, managing director of the UCS' Climate & Energy Program, said in a statement. "Those delays are due in large part to the previous administration dismissing a key science advisory board and ignoring the overwhelming evidence that the PM2.5 standard was insufficient."
While the UCS applauded the new standards, it argued the agency could have gone even further.
"New rules are long overdue, and today's final rule is a step toward cleaner air and healthier communities," Kumar said. "However, even with these new protections in place, too many people's health will still be at risk from dangerous exposures to PM2.5."
One gap in EPA regulations is that there are no standards in place to protect people from ultrafine particulate matter.
"The science is clear—ultra-fine particles make their way into the bloodstream contributing to premature death," said Beto Lugo Martinez, an environmental and climate justice leader who is part of the group Coming Clean.
American Lung Association president Harold Wimmer told the Times that the EPA should have set the limit at eight instead of nine, which was the safest standard in the 8 to 10 micrograms range recommended by the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. while the Sierra Club pointed out that the agency did not tighten the limit on 24-hour exposure, which remains at 35 micrograms. Lowering this number was also a committee recommendation.
However, the EPA under Regan and President Joe Biden has resisted industry pressure by strengthening the standards at all. In October 2023, representatives from sectors including fossil fuels, manufacturing, and mining sent a letter to Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients arguing that a nine-microgram standard would "risk jobs and livelihoods by making it even more difficult to obtain permits for new factories, facilities, and infrastructure to power economic growth" as well as hamper Biden administration efforts like the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act.
In responding to journalists Tuesday, EPA officials pushed back against the economic arguments, according to The Guardian. They said that the country would in fact see up to $77 in health benefits in 2032 for every $1 spent on complying with the update, and that 99% of U.S. counties were already on track to meet the new standard by that date, which is most likely the date by which states would face fines for not complying with the new standard.
"It's shameful that, in the face of such clear and compelling evidence of the public health and economic benefits of stronger soot standards, big polluters and their allies in Washington do everything in their power to undermine these commonsense air pollution standards," Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous said in a statement. "Their resistance is a stark reminder that the fight for clean air and a healthier future is far from over, and we will continue working to ensure the benefits of these stronger air pollution standards reach the communities that need them most."
The next step is for the EPA to spend the coming two years determining which areas do not meet the revised standards. After that point, the states that do not meet them would have 18 months to draft a plan to lower pollution levels.
Environmental advocates see the new standards as a chance to improve air quality and health in frontline communities such as the nation's ports.
"We're elated by the EPA's decision to finalize a significantly stronger air quality standard that will better protect all Americans, especially port communities," Terrance Bankston, Friends of the Earth's senior ports and freights campaigner, said in a statement. "Many Americans have been subjected to disproportionate health risks from air pollution via port operations for decades. The biggest offender has and continues to be soot pollution from port emissions. For LatinX residents, the exposure to soot pollution is 75% higher. For Black Americans, the risk of dying from soot pollution is the highest, with a rate of over triple that of white Americans."
Ports now have an opportunity to use the $3 billion from the EPA's Clean Port Program to switch to zero-emissions technology.
"We encourage port stakeholders to use the EPA's announcement as an opportunity to be on the right side of history," Bankston said.
The rule, and the science behind it, is also a reminder that fossil fuels harm human health even beyond driving the climate crisis, and that both regulating their pollution and transitioning away from them can have multiple benefits.
"Air pollution used to be the price we had to pay to heat our homes, commute, or produce goods by burning coal, oil, and gas. Thankfully, in the rapidly accelerating renewable energy era, that's no longer the case," Lisa Frank, executive director of Environment America Research & Policy Center's Washington Office, said in a statement. "These soot standards will save lives, clear our skies, and alleviate the burden of asthma and other illnesses. That's something all Americans should celebrate."
Across the nation, the success of the new rule will also depend on the degree to which the EPA holds violators to account.
"EPA must support the new standard with strong enforcement on polluters," Martinez said. "The continued influence of polluters on EPA does not align or meet with the administration's claimed priorities on environmental justice. Weak standards and weak enforcement give a green light to polluters and the government to continue business as usual."
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'Like It Never Happened': Federal Judge Tosses Trump Attack on Clean Water Rule
Denying a Biden administration request to temporarily retain the rule, the judge reestablished "the careful balance of state and federal power to protect clean water that Congress intended when it wrote the Clean Water Act."
Oct 22, 2021
Environmental and Indigenous advocates on Friday cheered as a federal judge rejected a Biden administration request to temporarily keep in place a Trump-era Clean Water Act rule that one attorney said would have "devastated" states' ability to manage their rivers.
"The Trump administration took an industry wish list and ran with it, trampling over state and tribal authority and public rights to clean water in the process."
On Thursday, Judge William H. Alsup of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco threw out a June 2020 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule changing the Clean Water Act Section 401 certification process to allow federal agencies to approve large projects--including fossil fuel pipelines, hydroelectric dams, industrial plants, wetland developments, and municipal facilities--against the wishes of states and Native American tribes.
In July 2020, 20 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration over the rule change. That September, Indigenous tribes and green groups also filed suit against the administration, claiming the new rule would jeopardize tribal and state efforts to protect their water quality.
"We feel vindicated by this win today," Western Environmental Law Center (WELC) attorney Sangye Ince-Johannsen said in a statement following the ruling. "The court's order immediately restores an essential clean water safeguard--and the careful balance of state and federal power to protect clean water--that Congress intended when it wrote the Clean Water Act."
Ince-Johannsen added that "the Trump administration took an industry wish list and ran with it, trampling over state and tribal authority and public rights to clean water in the process."
\u201cBREAKING: Fishing, rec advocates topple critical Trump-era #CleanWater Act federal power grab.\n\nBad Trump Clean Water Act rule immediately, completely nullified.\n\nLike it never happened.\n\nAwesome.\n\nhttps://t.co/EO0WmiQGEm\u2026 @americanrivers @AmerWhitewater @IdahoRivers @CalTrout\u201d— Western Environmental Law Center (@Western Environmental Law Center) 1634918829
The rule change, which was first proposed in 2019 and finalized in June 2020 during the tenure of former coal lobbyist and then-EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, set a one-year deadline for permitting decisions and limited the factors that state and tribal officials could consider.
At the time, Food & Water Action executive director Wenonah Hauter called the move--part of a broader regulatory rollback aggressively pursued during the administration of former President Donald Trump--"vindictive, spiteful, and capricious."
The Biden administration in July asked the California federal court to keep its predecessor's controversial rule in place until 2023 pending revision. Alsup found that "plaintiffs have established that significant environmental harms will likely transpire" if he granted the administration's request.
Alsup wrote:
This order finds particularly persuasive the state of Washington's example concerning three hydropower dams on the Skagit River. These dams will each require Section 401 certifications prior to EPA's promulgation of a replacement for the current certification rule.
As noted in the state of Washington's brief, "because [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] licenses for dams will last between 30-50 years, the lack of adequate water quality conditions attached to these licenses will have adverse impacts for a generation"...
The new certification rule curtails restrictions certifying authorities can impose on dams to limit increases in water temperature. The threatened Chinook salmon that reside in the Skagit River are vulnerable to these changes in water temperature, which puts at risk a primary food source for the endangered southern resident orca population in Puget Sound, of which there are currently only 73, the lowest number in over four decades.
According to WELC, Alsup's ruling "restores the broad authority of states and tribes to halt such projects, and alternatively to impose conditions on them, and restores opportunities for robust public participation in permit decisions."
\u201cToday, the court vacated, effective immediately and nationwide, the Trump Administration\u2019s attempt to dismantle key environmental protections in section 401 of the Clean Water Act \u2014 our office's latest win against a Trump administration action. Read more: https://t.co/uQQKSeLLSj\u201d— Attorney General Bob Ferguson (@Attorney General Bob Ferguson) 1634937839
Washington Attorney General and case co-plaintiff Bob Ferguson welcomed the ruling, contending in a statement that the Trump administration "did everything it could to yield to the interests of polluting industries."
"Today's ruling stopped one of his most egregious attempts to strip states' ability to protect their communities against threats to water quality," he added.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, also a plaintiff in the case, said that "as the state records its driest year in nearly a century, Californians are acutely aware of the value of water and its critical importance to sustaining our communities, ecosystems, and agriculture."
"We're pleased that the district court agreed to vacate this unlawful Trump-era rule and restore California's authority under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act," Bonta added. "State agencies rely on Section 401 to safeguard our precious resources by ensuring that federal projects meet the state's robust water quality requirements."
\u201cGOOD NEWS! We secured a decision by the District Court vacating an unlawful Trump-era rule & restoring the state's Clean Water Act authority.\n\nAs CA records its driest year in nearly a century, we won't stop fighting to safeguard this precious resource!\nhttps://t.co/R8pdBNEjUE\u201d— Rob Bonta (@Rob Bonta) 1634936689
Jennifer Marshall, general counsel for American Rivers, said that "the Trump administration's unlawful 401 rules abandoned the Clean Water Act's commitment to provide a voice for states and communities to protect and manage their rivers and streams, allowing potentially harmful projects to escape critical local review."
"We're proud to have played a role in protecting the rights of states and tribes to defend clean water safeguards," she added.
Redgie Collins, legal and policy director at California Trout, asserted that "the rule changes would have devastated California's ability to manage its rivers. We are relieved hydroelectric projects must still comply with local and state rules to provide flowing water and protect fish."
American Whitewater legal director Bob Nasdor said his organization is "thrilled to have defended the Clean Water Act from an attack that would have undermined the public's ability to protect rivers and communities from harms to the environment and recreation opportunity at hydropower dams and other federally-licensed energy projects."
Nasdor added that "this victory restores our access to information, time for review, and ability of the states to protect water quality that we've counted on for the past 50 years to ensure our rivers are safe, healthy, and accessible."
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When It Comes to Protecting America's Rivers and Streams, There's No Room for Compromise on Science
Michael Regan, President Biden's EPA administrator, must prioritize science and water quality over the demands of big industry.
May 26, 2021
With its "Waters of the United States" rule, President Obama's administration enacted unprecedented protections of rivers and streams. The Trump administration, ignoring science and the importance of wetlands, tried to return many of those waterways back to polluters by rolling back the Waters of the US rule.
Now Michael Regan, President Biden's EPA administrator, says he wants to forge a compromise.
"We don't have any intention of going back to the original Obama 'Waters of the U.S.' [rule] verbatim and we don't necessarily agree with everything that was in the Trump administration's version as well," Regan told a House Appropriations Committee last month. "We've learned lessons from both, we've seen complexities in both, and we've determined that both rules did not necessarily listen to the will of the people."
The attempt at middle ground is understandable as Regan is in the first months of a new administration dealing with the highly organized powers of manufacturing and factory agriculture. But this sounds dangerously close to a false equivalency when it throws some of Obama's efforts under the bus while suggesting that the previous administration's reversal of the rules was anything more complex than a hatchet job by industry hacks, most notably former EPA Administrator and ex-coal-industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler.
Before Administrator Regan tries to form one edible fruit out of an apple and an orange in the EPA's new rules, he must remember one thing: Obama's regulations for aquatic preservation were based on science.
The science behind the Waters of the US rule
When the Obama administration issued its Clean Water Rule in 2015, it expansively redefined waters eligible for federal protection as Waters of the United States (WOTUS). At that time, nearly half of the nation's rivers and streams and a third of our wetlands were in "poor biological condition," according to the EPA's water quality report to Congress.
So the administration sought to protect about 60 percent of water in the nation, including many intermittent and ephemeral streams that experience natural dry periods but flow during rainy periods. Most people don't realize it but 59 percent of streams in the United States--and 81 percent of the streams in arid Southwestern states--are of this nature. A 2008 EPA report, published during the George W. Bush administration, said it was "critical" to consider the cumulative human impacts on such streams as 117 million people, a third of the populace, drinks water that relies at least in part on them.
"Given their importance and vast extent," the EPA said back then, "individual ephemeral or intermittent stream segment[s] should not be examined in isolation." The science is clear: even seasonal waterways are interconnected.
Unfortunately, industry and its political enablers went on a rampage to exempt as much water as possible from federal protection. The US Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Mining Association, the National Association of Home Builders, and the National Association of Manufacturers all opposed the rule, often propping up "small farmers" as poster children who would be burdened by having to worry that every "ditch" would be considered federally protected water.
The scare campaign reached such a level that a blogger for the Iowa Farm Bureau speculated, "You may not be able to weed and feed your lawn, spray for bugs, landscape with treated lumber and wood chips, fill in a low area with soil, or even dig a hole" without a federal permit. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst went so far as to invoke the horror of federal regulation for every "tire track that collects rain water."
Discarding science to eliminate protections for wetlands
Playing on these trumped-up fears, the last administration, led by Wheeler, rewrote the rules to say, essentially, that if you cannot visibly see the connection of small creeks to large rivers and lakes on the surface, then there is no connection deserving of federal protection. The reversal removed half of wetlands and a fifth of streams and tributaries from protection. This change came despite the strenuous objection of a host of scientists, including Wheeler's own scientific advisory board.
In a February 2020 admonishment, the board wrote Wheeler to say that his narrow definition of WOTUS "does not incorporate best available science." Reasserting how science has established major hydrologic connections between tiny tributaries and intermittent and ephemeral streams to large bodies of water, the board rebuked Wheeler for offering "no comparable body of peer reviewed evidence, and no scientific justification for disregarding the connectivity of waters" saying that it found "a scientific basis for the proposed rule. . . lacking."
Perhaps most ominously, the board warned that the administration's proposed rule excluded industrial and agricultural irrigation canals that can carry harmful contaminants into the nation's waterways, such as E.coli bacteria from vegetable farms or steroids from confined animal feeding operations.
Seconding the board, specifically on behalf of wetlands, were the leaders of seven research institutions concerned with freshwater science. In letters to the previous administration and Congress, they wrote that even though wetlands comprise less than six percent of the landscape, they play a massive, outsized role in filtering urban and agricultural runoff, trapping sediments, mitigating floods and being a nursery for a myriad of wildlife. They noted that clean water is the backbone of an $400 billion-a-year outdoor recreation industry. "Like diamonds," the seven research organizations said of wetlands, "they can be small but extremely valuable."
That is exactly what Administrator Regan needs to pay attention to as he crafts the Biden administration's rule to protect the nation's rivers and streams. When he was secretary of environmental quality for the state of North Carolina, he was lauded by both environmentalists and industry for his ability to craft compromise. The Natural Resources Defense Council praised Regan, who links his childhood asthma to coal plant pollution in his native Goldsboro, N.C., for an agreement with Duke Energy that resulted in the largest coal ash cleanup in the nation and a settlement with former DuPont subsidiary Chemours to better prevent PFAS" forever chemicals" from contaminating the Cape Fear River.
He also established the state's first Environmental Justice and Equity Board. One of the members of the board, Naeema Muhammad, told Grist, "We didn't get a real voice until he came into office."
Despite those positive testimonials, though, some questioned whether Regan also gave too much deference to other powerful industries in North Carolina. Top on the list is the pork industry, infamous for toxic waste lagoons, spills, and stench in nearby communities. Too often, some critics said, Regan should have suspended operations in severe cases of environmental injustice from hog farm pollution from concentrated animal farming operations (CAFOs) instead of merely fining chronic offenders.
Some activists said in a Rolling Stone profile that Regan often displays a style that appears to bring stakeholders to the table as equals, when in reality, industry arrives with a loaded deck of money and lawyers. Elizabeth Haddix of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said, "It's not an equal playing field. The industry controls everything here." She told E&E News that Regan's decision not to use his executive authority to pull permits from hog polluters, who she said are disproportionately situated near communities of color, "was a horrible disappointment for us."
EPA Administrator Regan must follow the science
Under both the second President Bush and President Obama, the EPA said that even streams that flow seasonally are still critical to our water infrastructure. The EPA under the previous administration chose to overlook this fact. In the short time between last June and September, Bloomberg Law found that, of 1,085 exemptions sought by polluting industries and developers to escape federal water regulation for their projects, the Army Corps of Engineers granted 758, or 70 percent of them. About 200 of the exemptions were granted on the very first day the rollback took effect, a complete abandonment of the scientific analysis that previously often took up to three years to complete.
Regan said last week, "I don't believe we have to choose between good water quality ... and overly burdening our small farmers." It's certainly acceptable for the Biden administration to factor in true burdens to small farmers in its rewrite of the WOTUS rule. But Regan must prioritize science and water quality over the demands of big industry. Because the prior administration had no scientific justification for disregarding the connectivity of waters, the burden is on him to reconnect science to regulation--and thereby reconnect the nation's waterways.
On that, there can be no compromise.
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