Hazed and Confused: Arizona Fights Anti-Coal Regional Haze Rules

The U.S. Chamber report authored by Competitive Policy Institute policy analyst William Yeatman, “EPA’s New Regulatory Front: Regional Haze and the Takeover of State Programs,” contains a case study of the Navajo Generating Station, another Arizona coal plant in the same situation as the Apache, Cholla and Coronado plants involved in this suit. EPA wants to hammer the Navajo plant with regional haze controls that would cost $700 million. Yet peer-reviewed research has concluded that there’s little chance that any discernible visibility would occur.

The path to Arizona’s lawsuit began a few years ago. Yeatman explains EPA’s intention on regional haze:

EPA prefers different, more stringent, and more costly controls. And EPA is determined to force the states to implement these more costly controls over any and all objections. The problem is that the law provides primacy for the states—not EPA—to address regional haze within the states’ borders.