AIR QUALITY RATING IN STATE UP FOR DEBATE
Officials in favor of EPA classifying Colorado as “serious” violator.
The Environmental Protection Agency faced intense public worries at a hearing Friday in Denver before a long-expected decision on whether to reclassify Colorado as a “serious” violator of federal air quality standards — a move that would force stricter state control of air pollution at oil and gas operations and other industrial sites.
Colorado health officials favor the reclassification and had asked
EPA officials why the hearing was necessary, given uncontested data showing a failure to comply with the national ozone pollution health standard.
Gov. Jared Polis declared in March that Colorado won’t seek a “blame it on China” waiver that former Gov. John Hickenlooper had pursued based on wafting international pollution, instead directing urgent “everything in our power” action to clean up bad air.
“The data is what it is. It shows we didn’t attain the air quality standard. We need to move into the ‘serious’ category. We’ve been planning around that,” John Putnam, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s director of environment programs, said in an interview. “It is good for affected parties and residents of the Denver metro area to know this is our status.”
But EPA officials said they wanted input from “interested parties.” In an all-day hearing, a panel of three agency experts heard from Weld County commissioners and representatives of the oil and gas industry — the main source of volatile organic chemicals pollution that leads to the formation of ozone — who urged delay.
They also heard pleas from mothers, nurses and environmental advocates chafing at the degradation of air quality along the Front Range and warning of rising respiratory problems such as asthma, which is seen at higher rates in Denver than in other U.S. cities and at triple the national norm.
“Why are we here today?” asked Moms Know Best leader Jen Clanahan. “Is there a possibility that the EPA is considering not mak
ing this change? Is it just a stall tactic? I don’t understand. And the idea that our government would ignore our filthy air and not address the problem is terrifying to me.”
Nurse Linda McKibben told of conducting room-toroom rounds at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Lafayette, where patient diagnosis charts increasingly indicate “respiratory exacerbation,” compelling nurses to turn up artificial oxygen machines and rush more patients to intensive care.
Sierra Club lobbyist Ramesh Bhatt said unhealthy air is hurting millions of residents. “It is time for the EPA to quickly enforce the Clean Air Act. It is unconscionable to continue business as usual,” Bhatt said.
Since 2004, Colorado has been flunking federal air quality health standards. State data show ozone levels exceeding a decade-old federal limit of 75 parts per billion, let alone the current limit of 70 parts per billion. The World Health Organization recommends no more than 50 parts per billion to protect human health. Europe has set a limit of 60 parts per billion.
The EPA has been delaying a decision and blew a July 2018 deadline for reclassifying Denver and the northern Front Range from a “moderate” to “serious” violator. Wild Earth Guardians this year filed a lawsuit to spur the reclassification, and U.S. District Judge John Kane this summer ordered the agency to get going.
By the end of the year, the EPA plans to decide whether Colorado, where Front Range air monitors show ozone pollution around 79 parts per billion, has exceeded the 75 parts per billion limit. This decision would trigger a requirement that the state health department must issue permits for any industrial operation that emits more than 50 tons of pollution a year, down from the current permitting threshold of 100 tons.
State air pollution control officials say they’d have to issue about 600 more permits, which set limits and give a basis for compliance inspections. And Colorado within one year would have to submit a plan to the EPA for reducing ozone pollution to meet health standards.
“We want input from stakeholders,” Carl Daly, acting director of the EPA’s regional air division, said in an interview. “I wouldn’t say the air quality problem is getting worse. I would say it is continuing. … ”
Ozone pollution “is not decreasing enough to get below 75 parts per billion, and we have a new ozone standard, 70 parts per billion. The Denver area violates that, too.”
If the EPA formally reclassifies Colorado as a “serious” violator of federal air quality laws, the state would have three years to comply with the 75 parts per billion standard. Colorado’s Air Pollution Control Division for more than a year has been wrestling with how to meet both the 75 parts per billion standard and the current 70 parts per billion standard.
Fossil fuels industry lawyers and leaders of Weld County, where 21,000 of the 52,700 active oil and gas wells in the state are located, argued a crackdown would be unfair and that deadlines should be extended.
“We’ve improved our air. The problem is they keep moving the goalposts,” Weld County Commissioner Scott James said in an interview, referring to air testing that showed ozone around 65 parts per billion in Weld County, down from 82 parts per billion in 2006.
Cutting pollution to comply with the standard in three years would be “costly,” he said. “It prevents new business in Colorado’s fastest-growing county.”
Andrew Casper, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s director of legal and regulatory affairs, testified that “no industry has done more to reduce emissions of ozone precursors.” Casper said reclassifying Colorado as “serious” and the stricter controls that would trigger “will significantly impact” oil and gas operations.
“We are concerned about the potential for swelling permitting backlogs,” and changing the threshold where polluters must obtain permits “will undoubtedly drive air permitting to a slow crawl.” For Colorado to submit a plan and meet ozone pollution standards within three years “is unrealistic,” he said. “The EPA has discretion.”