Red state AGs hit Biden admin with legal challenge over stringent air quality regulation

A coalition of red state attorneys general is challenging the Biden administration over one of its most stringent air quality regulations.

Twenty-four states are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent tightening of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for particulate matter (PM2.5), arguing that the regulation is arbitrary, capricious, and illegal. The EPA reduced the allowable annual PM2.5 standard from 12 micrograms per cubic meter to 9 micrograms per cubic matter, or by about 25%

“The EPA’s new rule has more to do with advancing President Biden’s radical green agenda than protecting Kentuckians’ health or the environment,” Republican Kentucky Attorney General Russel Coleman said in a statement about the lawsuit. “This rule will drive jobs and investment out of Kentucky and overseas, leaving employers and hardworking families to pay the price.”

States Petition for Review – EPA PM2.5 Rule by Nick Pope on Scribd

In addition to Kentucky, the states represented in the petition include West Virginia, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming.

“Petitioners will show that the final rule exceeds the agency’s statutory authority and otherwise is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with law,” the legal filing reads. “Petitioners thus ask that this Court declare unlawful and vacate the agency’s final action.”

Notably, EPA data demonstrates that seasonally-adjusted national average PM2.5 concentration fell by 42% between 2000 and 2022, while American gross domestic product (GDP) has grown by more than 50% in the same window. Elected Republicans, energy experts, and industrial interests sharply criticized the final rule when the EPA unveiled it in early February, contending that the NAAQS update is predicated on questionable science and imposes needless restrictions on the economies of states most likely to struggle with compliance.

More than 70 industrial executives and trade associations wrote an October 2023 letter to White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients warning that tightened PM2.5 NAAQS could seriously undermine America’s industrial capacity and potentially interfere with implementing projects funded by President Joe Biden’s signature bills, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act.

The agency claims that the revised NAAQS will prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths and 290,000 lost workdays and that it will produce up to $46 billion in net health benefits in 2032. However, tighter standards could also reduce U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by about $87 billion and jeopardize up to 311,000 jobs, according to a May 2023 study conducted by Oxford University and commissioned by the National Association of Manufacturers.

About half of the country’s total primary PM2.5 pollution comes from dust and fires, according to an EPA document from May 2022. Sources of the dust mentioned in that document include dust attributable to agriculture, construction, and roads.

The EPA did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

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