EPA updates cross-state pollution rule with stricter standard

October 12th, 2016 by Dakota Software Staff Industry News

The Environmental Protection Agency has attracted a lot of attention for its clean power plan, which strongly regulates some forms of energy production and has drawn a multi-state federal lawsuit. Another set of environmental regulations focused on power plant emissions of nitrous oxide enforced by the agency, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, recently received an update and attracted negative attention from environmentalists. Many of these groups believe the changes to the rule, which governs emissions that produce ground-level smog, don't go far enough, according to government and technology news provider Morning Consult. A noticeable shift from a more stringent standard originally released in the EPA's proposal to a less-strict one in the final version of the rule has also attracted attention.

A significant, although smaller reduction
The CSAPR region includes 22 states in the geographic middle and eastern portions of the country, stretching from New York to Texas. The rule itself exists to mitigate issues with some states' location generally downwind of others, meaning pollution created in those upwind areas has a propensity to end up spreading downwind into others. The finalized version of the rule, which was first created in 2011, cuts the amount of nitrous oxide produced by power plants during the summer season by about 80,000 tons starting in 2017.

Morning Consult said the initial amount allocated in the proposal was 299,592 tons, which is significantly lower than the finalized rule, which gave the 22 states an allowance of 315,986 tons. What was close to a 25 percent reduction in total emissions is now slightly lower than 21 percent. Notably, despite the overall shift downward in the total allowable amount of nitrous oxide released, 15 of the 22 states have expanded limits, while the other seven have a lower maximum. Those 15 states are, according to Morning Consult: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

The end goal of the CSAPR is to reduce surface-level air pollution, and power plants inside the regulated region will have to make adjustments when monitoring their output. Environmental compliance software helps businesses maintain a high level of insight into operations and track important metrics for both internal use and sharing with relevant regulatory agencies.