Environmental Lawyer Blog

The car-obsessed culture in California has driven (ha ha!) agencies to address the issues of climate change and air quality in more frequent, increasingly stringent and multi-faceted ways. In the latest round of regulation aimed at tackling these ever-present issues, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has announced a package of proposed new rules which it hopes will deliver cleaner air, slash greenhouse gases (GHGs) and rapidly increase numbers of zero-emissions vehicles. The comprehensive Advanced Clean Car program has been in the works for three years and unites the goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the emission of smog-producing pollutants into one single group of rules for cars and light trucks from 2015 through 2025.

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Last week the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in an effort to resolve ongoing litigation under the Clean Air Act with environmental groups over dozens of past due state implementation plans (SIP), agreed to a schedule for taking action on more than 40 state plans aimed at lowering haze in national parks and wilderness areas.

Regional haze, the visibility impairment produced by a multitude of sources and activities that emit fine particles and their precursors across a broad geographic area, has decreased the average visual range in western national parks from 140 miles to 35 to 90 miles, and in eastern parks, from 90 miles to 15 to 25 miles. To address this problem, EPA promulgated regulations in 1999 requiring states to develop and submit SIPs to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas, including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Shenandoah Valley. These plans, which focus on reducing harmful pollution from large, older stationary sources, such as power plants, cement plants and large industrial boilers, were due in December 2007. In January 2009, EPA found that the majority of states had failed to submit their regional haze plans, in full or in part, and in August 2011, the National Parks Conservation Association and Sierra Club, among others, initiated litigation in federal Court to end the on-going delay.

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