CHEYENNE, Wyo.—Wyoming congressional representatives say they’re glad the Obama administration isn’t lowering the federal limit for ozone pollution for now but environmentalists call it a step back from fixing the state’s ozone problem.
Ground-level ozone near gas drilling areas in the Upper Green River Basin last winter topped the worst days in Los Angeles all last year. Ozone also is becoming a more serious problem in gas drilling areas in western Colorado and eastern Utah.
Obama overruled the Environmental Protection Agency and scientific advisers Friday by scrapping plans to lower the nationwide ozone limit.
Wyoming’s Sen. John Barrasso and Rep. Cynthia Lummis welcomed the news, saying a tougher ozone standard would have cost jobs and hurt the economy.
“With stagnant 9.1 percent unemployment, the president should continue to cut his other regulations that destroy jobs and economic growth across America,” Barrasso said in a release.
Lummis said the rule would have cost millions of jobs. As for Wyoming’s ozone problem, she said it’s better for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality to be on the case than the EPA.
“Rep. Lummis is much more comfortable with Wyoming’s experts at DEQ working night and day in Sublette County than with the EPA destroying 7 million jobs by issuing a rule no one can meet,” said her spokeswoman, Hayley Douglass.
An environmental group said “the sky has never fallen” with the economy and jobs because of any given pollution control regulation enacted over the years.
“This just means the health of people in Wyoming particular in the Pinedale area, where we’ve had such high ozone levels, is not going to be protected,” said Bruce Pendery with the Wyoming Outdoor Council.
“The current standard is the wrong target.”
The current standard is 75 parts per billion. Ozone above that level can be irritating and cause respiratory problems in susceptible people.
State regulators on several days last winter suggested that children and the elderly in the Pinedale remain indoors on high ozone days.
Environmentalists and regulators had been expecting a new standard in the range of 60 to 70 parts per billion. Now a new standard won’t be set until 2013.
With or without a new ozone standard, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality remains committed to learning more about and finding solutions to high ozone in western Wyoming, said Steven Dietrich, head of the agency’s Air Quality Division.
“It’s not going to affect the pace and the effort that we have going on right now in southwest Wyoming to address the ozone problem in Sublette County. We’re going to continue to work on that,” Dietrich said.
“We still from an environmental standpoint need to be responsible about trying to address wintertime ozone in that area.”
The wintertime ozone occurs during a particular combination of conditions including air pollution, a temperature inversion, bright sunshine and snow covering the ground.
Last week the group WildEarth Guardians sued the EPA to get it to decide on several proposed “nonattainment areas” for ground-level ozone, including the Denver and Salt Lake City areas and Sublette County in western Wyoming.
The decision by the Obama administration not to implement a new standard means the group will have to fall back on the lawsuit to make sure the current standard is being enforced, said Jeremy Nichols with the New Mexico-based group.
“We should at least be aiming to provide that level of protection for people,” Nichols said.
