REPEAL the EPA - Ozone Air Quality Standards: EPA’s Assault on Jobs and the Economy

Ozone Air Quality Standards: EPA’s Assault on Jobs and the Economy

By Andrew Grossman August 1, 2011

The U.S. economy won a temporary reprieve with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement last week that new ozone standards, which had been slated for this summer, will be delayed. The EPA’s “reconsideration” of the ozone standards it set in 2008 and issuance of more stringent standards violate all three of the fundamental values EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson pledged to honor: “science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency.”[1]

This enormously expensive regulation is unsupported by scientific evidence, violates the Clean Air Act (CAA), and appears timed to evade ongoing judicial review of the rulemaking process. Even the EPA’s estimate that the new rule will impose up to $90 billion in compliance costs annually[2] severely understates the impact on economic development and jobs in communities where attainment of the new standards will be impossible. Congress should make the EPA’s temporary postponement of its new ozone standards a permanent one....

YOU WORTHLESS STUPID ARROGANT BUREAUCRATS!

Unprecedented Expense

The Obama EPA continues to outdo itself, proposing a series of CAA rules each more expensive than the last. Its new ozone standards would be among the most expensive yet, with the agency estimating costs of $19 billion to $90 billion annually, depending on stringency.

Why are the costs so high? Because, as the EPA acknowledges, the technology needed to comply does not exist. Spending on “known controls” would amount to only $3.3–4.5 billion, while the remainder would go to “other, currently unknown technologies that would be needed to attain the proposed primary standards.”[5] Given that uncertainty, the costs may be higher, or it may prove more cost-effective to simply shutter industrial capacity.

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