“The Trump EPA is making NSR changes that put greater weight on economic imperatives, framing NSR as a regulatory burden to be avoided at every turn without consideration of impacts on air quality and public health. The NSR changes treat these competing imperatives as irreconcilable, privileging cost avoidance over air quality and public health (and, thus, the agency’s statutory duty). Individually and in combination these changes threaten to make NSR less effective in ensuring the achievement and maintenance of healthy local air quality.”
In their new piece, What’s at Stake in the Trump EPA’s Approach to NSR, EPA alums Janet McCabe, Joe Goffman, and William Niebling break down specific ways the changes to New Source Review permitting can increase air pollution and harm public health, including narrowing what qualifies as a pollution source and making permitting less stringent.
This article appears in the August 2019 issue of EM Magazine, a copyrighted publication of the Air & Waste Management Association (A&WMA; www.awma.org ).