WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed classifying the Washington area’s ozone problem as “severe,” a change that could mean stricter pollution controls for the region.
The change would affect the city and counties in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs, including Montgomery, Prince George’s, Frederick, Charles and Calvert counties.
Reclassification is not expected until January at the earliest, however, and even then it would give area governments until March 2004 to come up with a plan to cut emissions.
The EPA proposal came the same day that an environmental group sued to force the change in the region’s status from serious to severe, a change that was ordered in July by a federal judge. Earthjustice, a nonprofit public interest law firm that won the earlier suit on behalf of the Sierra Club, filed another suit Wednesday citing the EPA for not complying with the court’s ruling.
David Baron, an Earthjustice attorney, said the EPA’s latest proposal was not enough because “they have not taken action” and that the March 2004 deadline was “far too long.”
Citing this summer’s record number of high ozone level days in the region, he said air pollution is “a major public health problem and they’re (the EPA) dealing with it at a leisurely pace.”
An EPA representative refused to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday.
The EPA will accept public comment on the proposed “severe” designation for the next 30 days and expects to decide on a final rule by January, said Judith Katz, director of the EPA Region III air protection division.
Under the stricter classification, area governments would have to force businesses that emit 25 tons of volatile organic compounds or nitrogen oxides a year to meet emission-control and permitting requirements. The area would also have to cut emissions by at least 3 percent each year after 1999 until it meets federal clean air standards.
Power plants, factories and automobiles would be hit hardest by the proposed rules, said John Verrico, a Maryland Department of the Environment spokesman. He said the department has already been working on plans to tighten restrictions for those industries.
Verrico said the problem is that the proposed rule does not address pollution that blows in from the Ohio Valley and cannot be regulated by anyone in the Washington area. That “transport pollution” accounts for 30 percent of ozone-forming emissions in Maryland alone, he said.
Because of transport pollution, area governments last year asked the EPA to extend the deadline for them to create a plan to meet clean-air standards, Verrico said. The plan was due by 1999 but the EPA agreed that it would give the area until 2005 and that it would not reclassify the region’s problem as severe.
That extension sparked the first Earthjustice suit.
Baron admitted that the Washington area has a transport pollution problem, but said that it is mostly from Baltimore, not Ohio, and that the state could fix the problem.
Verrico disagreed, insisting that Baltimore and the rest of Maryland were affected by transport pollution from the Ohio Valley.
Baron said Earthjustice has asked for a court hearing within the next 20 days to expedite the lawsuit.
“It’s time to put an end to these delays,” he said.