Residents Living W. Steel Plant Pollution Appeal To EPA In Public Hearing That Came After Agency Dropped Pollution Limit
EDIT
The interim final rule, issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of its Clean Air Act obligation to set emission standards for hazardous air pollutants such as benzene and lead, delays the implementation of a Biden administration-era rule for steel and iron-making facilities for two years. The 2024 rule strengthened or set emissions limits and required fenceline monitoring for chromium. Some of its provisions had been scheduled to take effect in April.
Testimony at the hearing described billowing smoke, brown haze and an “overpowering stench” as part of the daily experience of living near a steelmaking facility. Steel mills are significant sources of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. “People have been exposed to pollution from steel mills in Gary for more than 100 years. So I can almost see why the EPA and U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs might think, ‘Another two years. What the heck? What does it matter?’” Denney said in her testimony, referring to big steel companies in addition to the federal government. Delaying “is a tactic that benefits industry, not people,” she said. “I believe the EPA’s role is to protect people, and those of us that live in the shadow of industry ask you to protect us.”
EDIT
Wednesday’s hearing was “strange” because it came after the EPA had already issued the interim final rule in July, said Jim Pew, an attorney at Earthjustice who has worked on air pollution issues since the 1990s. “That rule is already final. It already went into effect. EPA didn’t ask people what they thought before it was issued,” he said. Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against the agency in August, alleging that the interim final rule was illegal because the EPA is only supposed to bypass notice and comment procedures if there is a “real emergency,” Pew said. There was no evidence that any emergency existed in this case, he added.
“It’s a fake emergency. It’s just an excuse to push back the deadlines because industry doesn’t want to comply,” he said. Interim final rules are normally “the exception,” Pew said. He noted that the EPA has issued seven of them in the last few months. The agency is arguing that it needed to issue the interim final rule because of “impracticability” concerns, said Annie Fox, a law clerk at the Clean Air Council, which is also involved in the lawsuit. Fox said the agency’s claims that industry can’t meet the compliance deadlines were “illegitimate.”
EDIT
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03092025/epa-steel-mill-pollution-rule-delay/