The Environmental Protection Agency has taken the first steps to increasing the regulation of ozone by publishing the new proposed rule in the Federal Register today. Click here for the actual 179 page document. Comments on the rule, that would lower the allowable ozone threshold to 65-70 ppb and is estimated to result in all but three counties in Missouri becoming nonattainment areas, are due to the EPA by March 17, 2015. We will be giving you further instructions on how to comment on these onerous regulations so stay tuned.
If this regulation is implemented and nearly every county in Missouri is designated a nonattainment area, future manufacturing and industrial growth requiring air permits would be nearly impossible. A business seeking a permit to emit a certain amount of pollution would be denied without a corresponding loss of an equivalent amount of pollution from another business. In other words, no overall growth in the manufacturing and industrial sector of the economy would be allowed under the regulation.
“This short-sighted regulation is just another example of the Obama Administration’s EPA not paying attention to the importance of middle class jobs in the manufacturing sector, not caring about the real costs associated with these regulations that they introduce before major holidays and the tremendous negative impact they will have on our hard working Missourians and our nation’s economy,” said Ray McCarty, president of Associated Industries of Missouri. “We hope our leaders in Congress can turn the tide on this torrent of regulations coming from the EPA that appears to be set on increasing costs for every American through higher energy costs with their carbon regulations and the President’s so-called ‘war on coal’ and eliminating jobs through their new water and ozone regulations. This simply must stop — or the only jobs available may be working for the EPA.”