U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Tough Ozone/Pm Standards

Diesel Fuel News, March 5, 2001 by Jack Peckham

If anyone thought that American Trucking Associations' (ATA) lawsuit against U.S. EPA' s "national ambient air quality standards" (NAAQS) for ozone and fine particulate matter (PM) would stop tough diesel regulations, they can forget it.

The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled that EPA properly exercised its discretion to set fine-PM standards, didn't usurp congressional authority, and needn't consider industry costs in setting standards.

However, EPA will continue considering economics when issuing new regulations to implement the standards, the court pointed out. To non-lawyers, that might seem a fine distinction.

On the other hand, EPA must draw up a new policy for meeting new ozone limits because the original scheme would have set an impossibly short time for the biggest, most polluted cities to comply, the Supreme Court said.

Whether this will have any impact on future diesel emissions regulations for nitrogen oxides (NOx), an ozone precursor, is unknown. Current EPA regulations will nearly wipe out ozone-forming emissions from new highway diesels anyway, starting in late 2006.

The day after the Supreme Court upheld the NAAQS standards, new EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said she will leave the 2006 diesel regulations intact.

"While the American Trucking Associations is clearly disappointed in the Supreme Court's ruling, the Court did provide some guidance" on dealing with ozone, ATA said in a statement.

Environmentalists hailed the ruling, saying it elevates public health over potential compliance costs. It also upholds the notion that Congress and EPA can adopt "technology forcing" standards that might seem to industry as impossibly strict today, yet can become technically feasible tomorrow, through R&D.

"The Court affirmed the health-based premise of the Clean Air Act by supporting the principle that air pollution health standards must be set to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety and not based on costs," American Lung Association CEO John Garrison said.

EPA's new administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, also praised the decision. Her doing so could be another signal that industry shouldn't expect an easy road at EPA in legal challenges or negotiations over future diesel regulations.

"The Supreme Court today issued a solid endorsement of EPA's efforts to protect the health of millions of Americans from the dangers of air pollution, and affirmed our constitutional authority to set these kinds of health protection standards in the future," Whitman said.