House subcommittee to discuss important Clean Air Act bills

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment will be holding a hearing today entitled “From Gridlock to Growth: Permitting Reform Under the Clean Air Act.”

Five Clean Air Act-related bills are expected to be discussed at the hearing, four of which don’t appear to have been introduced yet. The bills amend the Clean Air Act and include Rep. Morgan Griffith’s (R-VA) New Source Review Permitting Improvement Act (H.R. 161) that would help to address the following issue described in the hearing memo:

Owners and operators of existing sources seeking to install modern pollution control equipment or improve the efficiency of their operations, which may reduce overall emission[s], may nonetheless trigger NSR [New Source Review] permitting requirements, discouraging environmental improvements.

This is an absurd outcome that undermines environmental objectives. H.R. 161 would amend the definition of “modification” in various sections of the Clean Air Act “to clarify that certain activities that do not increase emissions do not trigger NSR permitting.”

Two other bills would make commonsense changes to the Clean Air Act to ensure that attainment with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) is reasonably determined.

Specifically, the Fire Improvement and Reforming Exceptional Events Act (FIRE Act) would ensure that areas are not penalized by unfairly including emissions from prescribed burns in determining attainment. My colleague Jacob Tomasulo has explained:

Congress needs to take action to ensure that, codified within the CAA, states are not unfairly penalized for prescribed burns. Disincentivizing their use can undermine forest management. And ironically, penalizing the use of prescribed burns can hurt air quality, which undermines the purpose of the CAA.

The other NAAQS bill, the Foreign Emissions and Nonattainment Clarification for Economic Stability Act (FENCES Act), would expressly exclude foreign emissions from being considered in determining attainment.

The hearing memo says the following is one of the issues for discussion:

How the Clean Air Act can be modernized to meet the nation’s need for economic security while continuing to deliver clean air and a healthy environment.

CEI released a book entitled Modernizing the EPA: A Blueprint for Congress that provides many answers to modernizing the agency, including how to modernize the Clean Air Act.

There is also a specific section on modernizing the NAAQS process. The Subcommittee will hopefully consider the following important recommendations from this section, including:

• Require Congress to have a voice in the standard setting process and/or allow states to have a much greater voice in the process.

• Change when existing standards must be reviewed (e.g. 10-year timeframe as opposed to the current five-year timeframe, and preferably requiring at least 75 percent of the population to be living in areas of attainment before new standards can be adopted).

• Require the consideration of adverse effects before a new standard may be adopted.

• Require the consideration of technological feasibility when setting standards.

• Make it easier for states to establish that exceptional events have occurred.

The Subcommittee should be commended for working on ways to modernize the Clean Air Act. Congress, as a whole, should do so as well and advance important changes that can improve this statute.