Thune bill would head off potential EPA ozone rule

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) introduced a bill Wednesday to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from lowering the standard for ground-level ozone.

Though the EPA has not even proposed to reduce the standard, its scientific advisers and agency staff have recommended such a move.

{mosads}“Lowering the ground-level ozone standard would be a staggering blow to our economy,” Thune said in a statement.

“The Obama EPA needs to focus its efforts on areas already struggling with attainment, not strangle American industry with a job-killing regulation that could slash our [gross domestic product] by $270 billion per year and raise energy prices on American families,” he said.

Under the EPA’s air quality standards, areas with higher concentrations of ozone than the standard are declared to be in “nonattainment,” and must take actions to reduce the pollutant.

The Bush administration lowered the ozone level to 75 parts per billion in 2008, from 84. But 221 counties still haven’t met that standard.

EPA’s staff and science advisers want the agency to go down to a level of 60 or 70 parts per billion.

With Thune’s bill, the EPA would not be allowed to reduce the standard until 85 percent of the counties currently in nonattainment hit the 2008 standard.

“We’ve seen that the Obama administration’s war on Kentucky coal has come on many fronts over the last six years,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who cosponsored Thune’s bill.

He said it “would stop the EPA from imposing what could be the regulation with the most devastating impact yet on coal jobs.”

Ozone is a byproduct of some of the pollutants that result from burning fossil fuels.

The National Association of Manufacturers said in July that lowering the ozone standard to 60 parts per billion would be the most expensive regulation ever. The rule could cost $2.2 trillion for compliance, $3.4 trillion to the economy and 2.9 million lost jobs by 2040, according to a study the group commissioned.

The EPA has said that any cost-benefit analysis of a potential rule would be premature. The agency plans to decide by December whether it will seek to lower the ozone level.