Lawsuit Aims to Secure Clean Air Safety Net for Denver

With smog continuing to plague the eight-county Denver metro region, Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action filed suit yesterday against the Environmental Protection Agenc (EPA) to secure additional clean air protections and give a boost to community health. The Rocky Mountain News today reports on this effort.

The lawsuit, filed in Washington, D.C., aims to secure additional safegaurds to protect Denver metro communities from smog. Between 2001 and 2003, Denver violated health standards for ozone. The lawsuit challenges the EPA’s failure to declare the region to be in violation of federal health standards for ozone, or to be in “nonattainment.”

A nonattainment designation kicks in strict safeguards to prevent sliding back into violation, providing a safety net for clean air. Unfortunately, since 2004, the EPA has deferred designating the Denver metro region as nonattainment.

Instead, the EPA allowed the state of Colorado to adopt an Early Action Compact, where the state promised to prevent future violations of ozone standards in exchange for avoiding strict federal regulations. Despite the promises of the Early Action Compact, ozone climbed to unhealthy levels throughout the Denver metro region in 2006.

The lawsuit seeks to complement, not replace, smog reductions rules recently adopted by the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission. The rules, which require a 75% reduction in smog forming pollution from booming oil and gas developments north of Denver, were adopted despite industry objections last December.

If the Denver metro area was designated as nonattainment, additional clean air protections would have to be adopted by the state of Colorado, including:

• A contingency plan that kicks in if ozone standards are not met within a certain time frame.

• Stronger pollution permits for new and modified major sources of air pollution. These permits would require lowest achievable emission rates, essentially the strongest pollution limits.

• All reasonably available ozone control measures would be required for all sources of ozone forming pollution.

• More stringent transportation planning, including more rigorous analysis that must be completed to ensure transportation projects do not cause or contribute to ozone standard violations.

A nonattainment designation would continue to require pollution controls for oil and gas developments, but would likely also require additional controls on coal and natural gas burning power plants, oil refineries, and factories that use solvents.