EPA turns down plans for auto emissions

Decision is the first time in 40 years that the EPA has denied a Clean Air Act waiver for the state of California. The ruling is unlikely to stand up to court challenge.

The Environmental Protection Agency dashed Oregon’s chief plan for fighting global warming Wednesday when it blocked California’s model auto emissions standards.

The announcement by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson derails the plans of 17 states that contain half the country’s population and nearly half the nation’s car-buying public.

The reaction drew angry rebukes and also threats of lawsuits, including one from Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who broke from campaigning for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Iowa on Wednesday to say he would fight the decision by any means necessary.

S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, expected a swift and certain reaction to Wednesday’s news.

“There will be a tremendous backlash against the (Bush) administration. There will be strong, strong opposition,” Becker said. “This strikes at the guts of the Clean Air Act and states' rights.”

In a hastily arranged, late-afternoon press conference, Johnson said the energy bill passed by Congress and signed into law on Wednesday by President Bush will cause a historic reduction in the greenhouse gases emitted by automobiles.

The bill requires auto manufacturers to meet a fleetwide fuel efficiency average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

Johnson did not explicitly say but appeared to imply that the bill would substitute for further federal regulation of greenhouse gases.

“Certainly for motor vehicles, this is a comprehensive solution,” he told reporters during a national conference call. “Today’s law implements what we were preparing to do from a regulation perspective: That is, (it will) increase the fuel economy standard as well as to increase the support of renewable and alternative fuel source materials. That is what we’re focusing on.”

But states including Oregon and also environmental groups — who were already suing the EPA for delaying its decision on California’s emission standards — said pointing to the energy bill does not legally absolve the EPA from clearing the way for California’s standards as well as writing national plans for reducing greenhouse gases.

The energy bill restrictions would not be as tough or implemented as quickly as those that the California emission standards would produce, according to environmental groups.

The California law — adopted by Oregon — would require that the fleets that car manufacturers sell in participating states would emit 30 percent less greenhouse gases than today by 2016. A step down in the emissions would begin with the 2009 model year. The requirements would force a fuel efficiency increase to about 44 miles per gallon, according to some estimates.

The energy bill also will not satisfy the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision of last April that required the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases in the manner it regulates other air pollutants, said Dan Galpern, attorney with the Eugene-based Western Environmental Law Center, which joined the states’ earlier lawsuit against the EPA on behalf of environmental groups.

“The legal requirement is to regulate pollutants, and the fact that there is some corresponding reductions in carbon dioxide emissions that will result in increasing fleet mileage does not nullify EPA’s basic legal responsibility under the Clean Air Act,” he said.

Legal reasoning

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA could deny California a waiver to carry out its regulation for three reasons: The regulation would be less stringent than federal law; the regulation would not be technologically or economically achievable; or the state did not meet a condition of “compelling and extraordinary” need for its own regulations.

Those thresholds for denial are hard to meet. The EPA has routinely granted California’s waiver requests since 1967.

But this time, Johnson denied the waiver.

“Greenhouse gases are global in nature, which is unlike the other localized air pollutants covered by previous waivers the EPA has granted to the state of California,” he said. “Climate change impacts everyone regardless of whether the greenhouse gas emission occur. California is not exclusive in facing this challenge.”

The federal administrator also decried a “patchwork” approach to emission regulations, but only two sets of regulations are allowed under the Clean Air Act — the federal standard and the California standard.

The automakers also have argued that the California emission standards would limit consumer choice and create hardship for the industry by creating multiple, confusing sets of standards.

“Rather than looking at what’s needed to fight climate change, he basically parroted auto industry talking points,” said Sean Stevens, spokesman for Oregon Wild, which joined the earlier suit against the EPA.

“It runs completely counter to what the national feeling is about climate change and what needs to be done,” Stevens said.

The hazards the states face because of global warming — wildfires, snow pack melt, salt water intrusion into water supplies — are legally compelling and extraordinary, Galpern said, so Johnson’s decision is likely to be overturned in a court challenge,

“This is a usurpation of the states’ historic right to protect the health and welfare of their people. It’s unacceptable and it will not stand,” he said.