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LAist is part of Southern California Public Radio, a member-supported public media network. For the latest national news from NPR and our live radio broadcast, visitRobert Shobe, who lives adjacent to the Stellantis Mack Auto Assembly Plant, in Detroit, Michigan, on Oct. 3, 2023. Shobe suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which gets worse on days when the air is smoggy or smoky.If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily morning newsletter, How To LA.
It isn’t just industry that benefits, said John Walke, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The non-profit environmental advocacy organization has sued the EPA over its interpretation of the rule. “Loopholes and exceptions are treated as get-out-of-jail-free cards for politicians who are balancing economic activities and development with the need for clean air and public health,” he said.Earlier this year, Detroit was on tenterhooks.
Top officials from the office of governor Gretchen Whitmer sought meetings with regulators, beginning in July of last year. The south-east Michigan council of governments , a regional planning partnership, joined the effort. In October, an air-quality specialist with the environment, Great Lakes and energy department wrote to counterparts at the council: “We know that conversations are continuing to be had ‘at the White House level’ about Detroit ozone.
In his opinion, Michigan regulators “don’t want to enact more stringent regulations on some of the major industry in the area, many of which are auto-assembly plants and a very powerful political force in Michigan and nationally."‘Shocking and unseemly’Regulators have approached the EPA about exceptional events, or actually made filings, in at least 29 states. Emails and documents show that in more than half of those states, lobbyists and business groups weighed in on those efforts.
The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, representing major refiners like ExxonMobil, regional midstream companies, and marketing firms, paid for an exceptional event filing in Louisiana in 2017. That demonstration allowed the five-parish Baton Rouge area to meet its air-quality goals for the first time, affecting 800,000 people. It also let local polluters avoid tougher regulations.
This is “an entirely rational undertaking by these industries and their lawyers and their lobbyists”, he said. “There’s no downside to them crying chicken or being wrong because at worst, the agency doesn’t bite, but at best they express interest.Removing bad air days from the record isn’t cheap. States are spending millions of taxpayer dollars to get pollution forgiven, according to public contracts and requests.
In Clark County, Nevada, home to Las Vegas, local air officials have mounted a sustained campaign to take advantage of exceptional events, including arguing that wildfires are beyond local control. In 2021, the county filed 17 exceptional event determinations with federal regulators; the EPA rejected five of them, and declined to weigh in on the rest. All told, Clark County has approved spending more than $3.3m over a nine-year period.
But breathing clean air isn’t the same thing as meeting federal air requirements, he said, which carries legal consequences: “If there weren’t such significant repercussions for not attaining, like the potential loss of federal highway funds and so on, then there wouldn’t be that pressure on air districts and CARB to really take full advantage of exceptional events.”
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