Streetsblog Capitol Hill

This morning, President Obama announced that he would direct the EPA to back off of new ozone standards that would have saved an estimated 12,000 lives [PDF]. They’ll revisit it in 2013.

Obama said the action was taken in the interest of “reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover,” but environmental groups slammed the decision as “a huge win for corporate polluters,” in the words of League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski.

NRDC President Frances Beinecke said, “The Clean Air Act clearly requires the Environmental Protection Agency to set protective standards against smog — based on science and the law. The White House now has polluted that process with politics.” Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said she was “disappointed” with the decision.

The decision has a major impact on efforts to reform transportation, NRDC’s Deron Lovaas told Streetsblog.

“It frankly makes our job harder, in terms of reducing pollution from mobile sources,” Lovaas said. “If they had set the standard closer to 60 parts per billion, as opposed to 80, regions and states would have to get really serious about transit, and really serious about smart growth, and really serious about reducing vehicle miles traveled, because the gains couldn’t all be made through better technology.”

Business interests had long lobbied against the tighter standards, and they expressed their pleasure at the president’s announcement. The Chamber of Commerce cheered the move, rationalizing that by waiting for the statutorily-required rule-making in 2013, the EPA “can base its decision on the most recent science, not 2006 science.”

According to the National Review, some Republicans had called the ozone requirements “the single most harmful regulation proposed by the administration” and estimated that the total cost of implementation would have been “at least $1 trillion over a decade and millions of jobs.” House Speaker John Boehner called Obama’s concession to polluters “a good first step” and said he was glad the White House “recognized the job-killing impact of this particular regulation.”

Did we mention it would have saved 12,000 lives?

Gerontologists in a laboratory at the University of Southern California exposed a group of mice to the same atmospheric conditions that humans encounter when driving along the freeway. Horrifyingly, they discovered that the mice’s brains showed the kind of swelling and inflammation associated with diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The researchers didn’t super-dose to get these results: the mice were exposed to freeway air for the equivalent of 15 hours a week — less than the 18.5 hour average Americans spend in their cars. Jokes aside about getting those darn mice off the road, the study suggests that driving less can reduce our risk of brain damage.

For decades, Americans have been hearing about the dangers of air pollution, much of which derives from our fleet of vehicles. Yet as the body of research has grown, clarifying just how damaging automobiles are to human health and the environment, we’ve persisted in spending an astounding amount of time in cars. As a nation, we drove three trillion miles last year. We have developed responses designed to treat symptoms of the underlying ailment, like keeping children indoors when the local ozone level triggers “code red” or “code purple” alerts. But as a whole, we have not responded to the everyday contamination of our bodies by driving less.

Most of us feel powerless to affect air quality. Many feel trapped by the built environment and unable to cut down on driving. Plenty also see no point in changing their behavior when “everyone else” is going to drive as much as they wish to. It’s unsurprising then that news about pollution is brushed aside—as is news about other ills caused by driving, including crash fatalities and injuries, stress, and obesity.

The UCLA mouse study joined other recent reports that highlight the variety of ways in which remaining overly reliant on the private automobile is self-destructive. But these reports should also make clear that changes in individual behavior can alleviate some of the problems. Here’s just a sampling:

• Sitting for long stretches greatly increases the risk of heart disease – even if you exercise afterwards – according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. It may come as no surprise that sitting isn’t good for your health, but what’s shocking is that the raft of articles following the study tended to ignore active transportation while advocating improbable solutions such as standing treadmill desks. What’s more practical than replacing some of our long hours planted in the driver’s seat with walking, biking, or getting by foot to public transit stops?
• While there was some good news in the American Lung Association’s 2011 State of the Air Report, as one commentator put it, it was “like getting a 53 on your math test after you got a 49 on your last one.” Half of Americans live in areas in which air quality is unhealthy. The ALA points out that the elderly, the young, and the sick are most vulnerable to the effects of pollution. And of course some of the sick—such as those suffering from asthma and heart disease—can trace the very causes of their conditions to air pollution.

Read more…

In Washington, "grassroots lobbying" is more often associated with industry-funded issue campaigns than ground-up local advocacy. But residents of Detroit's industrial southwest neighborhoods took the term back to its roots on Friday, getting a personal visit from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials after a groundswell of complaints about decaying air quality.

From the Detroit Free Press' report:

Environmental Protection Agency officials watched intently Friday as a computer that measures air pollution on the spot showed spikes around industrial plants in southwest Detroit. ...

Next to the plants in the 48217 ZIP code and nearby areas are whole neighborhoods boxed in by oil recycling plants, asphalt makers, a steel plant, a stinky composting yard, a salt factory and an expanding oil refinery.

"This is what we live with," said [Jayne] Mounce, who lives near Marathon's oil refinery and petroleum terminals.

This week, Mounce said she had taken her own air samples with the help of national environmental monitoring group Global Community Monitor and found lead-laden dust, which could come from a steel mill nearby. A few months ago, similar sampling found a dangerous chemical in the air -- methyl ethyl ketone, a gas that can cause numbness, tremors and gait problems.

The story notes that EPA officials have "fewer than 50 air monitors" in the entire state of Michigan, where the industrial base has shrunk in recent years but remains a prime economic mover -- and generator of air pollution. Nonetheless, the Detroit residents' plea for stronger air quality standards is an unusual sight compared with the more common practice of localities seeking more lax rules or more time to comply with EPA pollution limits.

Methyl ethyl ketone, the gas found in local air sampling, is commonly found in manufacturing plant emissions as well as specific products such as industrial glue and the exhaust of cars and trucks, according to the Centers for Disease Control's toxic substances registry. In 2005 it was removed from the list of hazardous air pollutants regulated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act after a federal appeals court ruling that endorsed the move.

The Senate environment panel today was forced to prematurely shutter its latest hearing on the next long-term federal transportation bill after Republicans invoked a rarely-used right to close down committee work as part of their broader protest against the majority party's health care legislation.

The abbreviated hearing gave senators little time to discuss the next transportation measure's impact on energy and the environment, a significant issue for members of both parties. "It's a shame," committee chief Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said, "but we're caught up with something that has to do with health care."

Gina McCarthy, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) senior air-quality official, did get to outline the results of an report her agency released last month [PDF] at the request of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). The senator had asked the EPA to determine the maximum achievable reduction in pollution from the transportation sector -- which currently accounts for about 30 percent of total U.S. emissions -- by the year 2030.

For its emissions model, the EPA assumed that auto fuel-efficiency standards would continue rising in concert with the Obama administration's plan to reach an average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. Other assumptions included a 60-percent improvement in the fuel efficiency of new freight trucks and the transit and land use reforms outlined in last year's Moving Cooler report.

What did the EPA find? Per McCarthy's testimony:

Read more...

With the White House's agenda crowded by high-profile debates that remain unresolved after lengthy talks with Congress -- think health care, financial regulation, even unemployment benefits -- only a handful of lawmakers are publicly engaging with the dominant issues surrounding the next long-term federal transportation bill.

Within that group of lawmakers, however, there is palpable agreement that Washington needs to look at distributing its limited supply of infrastructure money based on measurable standards which would hold states and cities accountable for their decisions. The stimulus law's elevation of "shovel-readiness" above all other criteria for funding, in other words, looks poised to give way to a more balanced method of determining which projects get funded.

Of course, adopting broad standards for federal transportation spending is far easier said than done. At a Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) event yesterday, current and former members of Congress reckoned with the challenge.

Perhaps the boldest suggestion of the day came from Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), sponsor of the so-called "CLEAN TEA" proposal to guarantee clean transport a share of revenue from cap-and-trade climate legislation. Carper wondered whether the nation's mounting deficits make the case for replacing the formula-based system of federal transport spending with a set of goals that would determine which projects get funded.

Carper's four proposed goals were congestion relief, safety, air quality, and job creation, a list that resembles the "metrics" offered by the BPC in its June framework for transportation reform.

One of Carper's GOP colleagues, Sen. George Voinovich (OH), pronounced the concept "wonderful" as the BPC audience looked on. Voinovich described the House legislation offered in June by transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) as a major step towards a more accountable system, though some reform groups have questioned that bill's decision to let states and localities set their own transportation goals -- allowing a lot of wiggle room to develop.

Read more...

Pensacola, Florida. Springfield, Missouri. Fort Wayne, Indiana. All three of those metropolitan areas have populations between 350,000 and 500,000, and all three would have been required to install nitrogen dioxide monitoring stations near major roadways under a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule cracking down on the pollutant.

But as the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) noted soon after the EPA unveiled its rule, an initial draft setting the minimum population for local air-quality monitoring at 350,000 was changed to 500,000, leaving out cities such as Fort Wayne and effectively weakening the nitrogen dioxide rule's accountability.

Another watchdog group traced the change to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which evaluates new agency regulations through a smaller arm called OIRA (short for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs). The president's nominee to lead OIRA, Cass Sunstein, has taken heat from green groups for his past criticism of government's role in the rule-making process.

What's the significance of the OMB's change to the EPA rule? "The fewer the monitors, the more likely it is that many metropolitan areas will be able to exceed EPA’s limits without detection or correction," CPR president and law professor Rena Steinzor wrote on the group's blog in late January.

Steinzor's post also addressed the significance of the new nitrogen dioxide rule, noting that the pollutant tends to be especially common, and dangerous, in lower-income neighborhoods located near busy roads:

Read more...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced a new "one-hour standard" aimed at limiting Americans' short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a pollutant created by cars, power plants, and other industrial sources.

NO2, a main ingredient in smog, is linked to adverse respiratory health effects such as chronic asthma. In creating a new one-hour NO2 exposure limit of 100 parts per billion (ppb), the EPA noted that the risk of short-term NOX exposure is particularly acute near major highways.

As EPA chief Lisa Jackson said in a statement:

This new one-hour standard is designed to protect the air we breathe and reduce health threats for millions of Americans. For the first time ever, we are working to prevent short-term exposures in high risk NO2 zones like urban communities and areas near roadways. Improving air quality is a top priority for this EPA. We’re moving into the clean, sustainable economy of the 21st century, defined by expanded innovation, stronger pollution standards and healthier communities.

The rule will be enforced by setting up monitors near roads in areas with more than 500,000 residents, according to the agency, with a deadline of 2013 for the beginning of pollutant tracking. The EPA said it plans to work directly on 40 new monitors for cities and towns with the most significant NO2 exposure.

It's worth noting, however, that major cities have remained out of compliance with EPA air-quality standards for years without losing significant amounts of federal highway money, as the federal government often threatens. Moreover, the EPA has not changed the current annual NO2 standard of 53 ppb.

Obama administration officials "need to align together" to work on reducing the nation's total vehicle miles traveled -- work that should go beyond a pending congressional climate bill -- the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) air-quality chief said today.

Gina McCarthy, EPA's assistant administrator for air and radiation, acknowledged in a speech at EMBARQ's transportation conference that her agency as "less effective" working alone on crafting strategies to cut VMT.

McCarthy called for federal agencies to work together on a coordinated approach to transportation policy that makes economic and environmental factors an essential part of the mix.

"When we say transportation, everybody thinks 'car'," McCarthy said. "That's a challenge for us as individuals, as a society -- and clearly it's a challenge for me, as someone who's supposed to deliver clean air to breathe."

McCarthy described lowering VMT as the third leg of the EPA's transport stool. The other two, she explained, are encouraging vehicle technology to reduce emissions and promoting cleaner-burning fuels.

But that third leg drew the bulk of McCarthy's attention, as she echoed the mission statement of the White House's inter-agency "livable communities" effort.

"Transportation, above all else, needs to be looked at through a series of complementary measures, beyond cap-and-trade, in order to drive the types of reductions we need in order to live in a sustainable world," said McCarthy, a veteran environmental regulator in Connecticut.

And McCarthy appeared to recognize the existing federal system's built-in bias toward transportation projects that make life difficult for air-quality regulators. "The easiest way to spend large hunks of money is to widen a road," she said. "The worst way to spend large hunks of money is to widen a road."

As for the cap-and-trade bill, which faces an uncertain future thanks to resistance from red-state Senate Democrats, McCarthy warned Congress that her agency is acting under a Supreme Court mandate to curb greenhouse gases: "Though we support cap-and-trade ... EPA is going to do what the law says and what the science says."

The National Academy of Science's new report on the hidden health costs of U.S. reliance on fossil fuels has generated high-profile media coverage around the country, most of it focusing on the $62 billion annual estimate for coal rather than the $56 billion projection for vehicles.

But Greenwire's write-up is particularly interesting, if only for its responses from the National Mining Association and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative and climate-denying D.C. think tank that has taken $2 million from Exxon Mobil this decade. From the Greenwire piece (sub.req'd.):

"Energy production from fossil fuels causes air pollution, which damages people's health and welfare. That was big news -- in the 1970s," Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wrote in an e-mail. "Did we really need a 346-page study with more than 50 expert contributors to tell us that?" ...

"That aside, without energy, we'd all freeze in the dark," Lewis added. "The net cost of not having energy vastly outweighs the supposed 'hidden' costs."

Interestingly, Lewis' quip about "the net cost of not having energy" was similar in substance from the that of the Mining Association, which asserted that "the health and welfare benefits" of burning coal for electricity "clearly outweigh the cost."

Clean diesel engines, which expel less emissions and get better mileage than conventional counterparts, are benefiting from a lobbying campaign by auto companies. And environmental advocates have come to the table, agreeing with the construction industry on a plan to convert highway construction equipment to clean diesel.

The accord between the Clean Air Task Force and the Associated General Contractors was first reported in today's Greenwire: 

The groups want the [next long-term transportation] legislation to authorize states to require diesel emissions reductions at construction sites and to cover the cost of retrofitting or re-powering equipment manufactured to meet earlier emissions standards.

The proposal would not alter the bidding process for contractors hoping to land federally funded transportation projects, and any additional costs of the emissions-savings measures would be covered by federal funding.

Federal funds to reimburse contractors for any increased costs they incur would come from an existing federal air-quality program, the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program.

On its face, the deal sounds promising. Exhaust from older, dirtier diesel engines contains more than 40 separate toxic contaminants, according to California state air regulators, but diesel emissions standards have been strengthened at a far slower rate than those for conventional autos.

Moreover, providing government funding to help convert diesel highway equipment -- thus ensuring the construction industry doesn't foot the bill -- has paid off in California, known for its ahead-of-the-curve approach to air pollution.

But using funds from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) program to pay contractors for converting their engines risks depleting a crucial source of aid for clean transportation. Read more...