Posted on February 13, 2010 by Seth Jaffe
While a lot of attention has been paid to whether EPA would reverse the Bush EPA decision denying California’s petition to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from mobile sources, it is now clear even outside the climate change arena that life at EPA is going to be substantially different under the current administration. As if evidence were really needed for that proposition, EPA announced this week that it was putting on hold the NSR aggregation rule that EPA had promulgated on January 15, 2009.
The rule, which had been long sought by industry, would have provided that nominally separate projects would only have to be combined – aggregated for NSR/PSD purposes – if they are “substantially related.” It also would have created a rebuttable presumption that projects more than three years apart are not substantially related. Responding to a request from NRDC and the OMB memo asking agencies to look closely at rules promulgated before the transition but not yet effective, EPA concluded that the rule raises “substantial questions of law and policy.” Therefore, EPA postponed the effective date of the rule until May 18, 2009 and also announced that it was formally reconsidering the rule in response to the NRDC petition.
To those in industry, the aggregation rule was not a radical anti-environmental roll-back of environmental protection standards. Rather, it was more of a common-sense approach towards making the NSR program simpler and clearer. It is one of my pet peeves with the prior administration, however, that it gave regulatory reform a bad name.
In any case, I feel as though I should open a pool regarding what will be the next Bush-era rule to be tossed overboard. We surely won’t have to wait long for it to happen.
Tags: Aggregation Rule, Air, Deterioration, EPA, NSR, New Source Review, News Updates, PSD, Regulation, permitting, Prevention of Significant Deterioration