EPA today took an important step toward reversing one of the Bush Administration’s “midnight regulations,” announcing a proposed rule that would improve monitoring standards for airborne lead. Under EPA’s new proposal, any establishment that emits lead into the air at a rate of a half a ton per year or more could be required to have a monitoring station.
In a previous post I noted that EPA finalized a rule in late 2008 that only required monitoring at sites with emissions topping 1 ton per year, after a last-minute entreaty from the lead battery industry and some of their accomplices at OMB. EPA had originally proposed a threshold somewhere in the 0.2 to 0.6 tons per year range.
After President Obama took over the White House and put Lisa Jackson in charge of the EPA, several environmental and public health groups petitioned the agency to reconsider the lead monitoring requirements. The newly proposed monitoring requirements are EPA’s response to the petition. Monitoring stations that detect airborne lead are important to EPA because they help the agency determine whether existing emissions controls are keeping lead below the health-based ambient air quality limits set under the Clean Air Act.
Besides lowering the threshold for site-specific lead monitors (which EPA estimates could more than double the number of site-specific monitors), the agency is also proposing a different network of non-site-specific monitors. The non-site-specific monitors are intended to measure typical neighborhood-scale lead concentrations and give EPA the data it needs to study trends in airborne lead concentrations. In the 2008 rule, EPA required monitors in areas with populations of 500,000 or more. In the newly proposed rule, EPA is considering abandoning the simple population-based placement and using instead an existing network of air quality monitors. The NCore Network, as it’s known, measures particulate matter, ozone, and other air pollutants at a neighborhood scale, which would make it useful for EPA’s efforts to better understand how multiple pollutants interact. But the size of the network is smaller than what the 2008 lead rule requires. The NCore network is about 80 sites, while the lead-only network would include about 100 monitors, sited based on census data. Since the NCore network is not sited based on population, many urban areas could get overlooked.
Obviously, there is a trade-off here that EPA is trying to balance. The costs of additional site-specific monitors under the new proposal might be defrayed through the use of the NCore network for other monitors. And these costs are a serious issue for the local air agencies that will be in charge of implementing the new lead monitoring rule during a time of serious budget woes.
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Matt Shudtz | December 30, 2009
EPA today took an important step toward reversing one of the Bush Administration’s “midnight regulations,” announcing a proposed rule that would improve monitoring standards for airborne lead. Under EPA’s new proposal, any establishment that emits lead into the air at a rate of a half a ton per year or more could be required to […]
Matt Shudtz | December 30, 2009
CPRBlog asked some of our regular bloggers to give us some suggestions for the high and low points of the regulatory year. We began by taking the Bush Administration’s “midnight regulations” off the table, so that we could focus in on the Obama Administration’s impact to date. CPR Policy Analyst Matt Shudtz offers up a number of […]
Rena Steinzor | December 29, 2009
CPRBlog asked some of our regular bloggers to give us some suggestions for the high and low points of the regulatory year. We began by taking the Bush Administration’s “midnight regulations” off the table, so that we could focus in on the Obama Administration’s impact to date. CPR President Rena Steinzor begins. The high point of […]
Daniel Farber | December 23, 2009
cross-posted from Legal Planet Rob Stavins has a good, concise overview of the session and the outcome on the Belfer Center website. Not as negative as some other observers, he highlights the extraordinary procecess that resulted in the Copenhagen Accord: It is virtually unprecedented in international negotiations for heads of government (or heads of state) […]
Ben Somberg | December 22, 2009
One year ago today, about 1 billion gallons of coal ash were spilled when a dyke collapsed at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s fossil plant in Kingston, Tennessee. The Knoxville News-Sentinel has the moment-by-moment account of what happened that night. They report that Roane County real estate and tourism have suffered, and that there are 14 […]
Rebecca Bratspies | December 21, 2009
On December 9, Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) introduced S. 2856, a one paragraph bill that would quietly gut a key portion of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) by dramatically expanding a narrow exception to one of the Act’s central mandates. Were it to pass, the bill would mark a significant step in the wrong direction for […]
James Goodwin | December 18, 2009
While the EPA announced Thursday that it was delaying a decision on issuing a proposed rule for coal ash, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has already hosted 10 meetings with industry representatives in recent months on the issue. The 10 meetings — the most on any topic at OIRA so […]
Rebecca Bratspies | December 18, 2009
NOAA issued a draft of its new catch share policy last week. Despite Director Jane Lubchenco’s clear support for the concept, the draft policy stops short of requiring that fisheries managers implement catch shares. This is a good thing. Instead of mandating catch shares, the draft policy focuses on education, cooperation, and transparency. The agency […]
Victor Flatt | December 17, 2009
As we move into the last days of climate negotiations in Copenhagen, the chances of securing a binding agreement of all countries continues to look less and less likely. The primary culprit, according to the New York Times, is the G77, a group of 130 developing countries that have negotiated as a block since arriving. […]