On December 4, the Sierra Club, together with a number of environmental justice, public health, environmental allies, commenced a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the Agency’s failure to protect public health by declining to designate the areas of the country that are not meeting EPA’s health-based smog air quality standard. The Sierra Club is represented in the litigation by Earthjustice, with co-plaintiffs American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, American Thoracic Society, Appalachian Mountain Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Law and Policy Center, National Parks Conservation Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, and West Harlem Environmental Action.
Ground-level ozone, also known as smog, is a corrosive air pollutant that inflames the lungs, triggers asthma attacks, and can cause hospitalizations and even premature death. In 2015, EPA strengthened the smog standard from 75 parts per billion (ppb) to 70 ppb based on overwhelming evidence that the prior 75 ppb standard—established in 2008—was inadequate to protect public health. While the Sierra Club and other groups have challenged the 2015 standard as not going far enough to satisfy the Clean Air Act’s health protection mandate, analysis by the Agency shows that achieving even a 70 ppb standard would save hundreds of lives annually and result in hundreds of thousands fewer asthma attacks and lost school days each year.
Once the EPA establishes a new air quality standard, the first step—and the one that triggers important clean air protections and deadlines to remedy failing air quality—is to determine which areas of the country are meeting or not meeting the new standard. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA was required to finalize these so-called “designations” by October 1, 2017. After withdrawing a prior announcement that the Agency was extending the October 1st deadline by a year after the Sierra Club and its allies challenged that announcement in court, October 1st came and went without any designations by EPA. Consequently, as required by the Clean Air Act, the Sierra Club and its allies provided notice to the agency of their intent to sue to compel EPA to complete the designation process.
When the EPA failed to complete the designations within the 60-day notice period, the Sierra Club and its allies on December 4th filed suit and moved for summary judgment, seeking final designations for the entire country within 180 days. The Sierra Club and its allies' legal efforts were subsequently complemented by states, which on December 5th filed their own complaint against the EPA seeking prompt action by the Agency to complete the designation process. The petitioning states included California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, the District of Columbia, and Minnesota (through the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency).
The Sierra Club’s efforts to implement the 2015 smog standard are part of the Club’s broader efforts to protect public health by ensuring that our ambient air quality standards are adequately health-protective and are fully and lawfully implemented. As a result of a consent decree with the Sierra Club, the EPA is required to finalize designations for many regions of the country for the sulfur dioxide air quality standard by the end of 2017. The Sierra Club is also involved in multiple lawsuits to compel the EPA to address interstate transportation of smog-forming pollution, including two lawsuits to compel EPA to respond to petitions filed by downwind states asking the agency to find that power plants in upwind states are interfering with those states’ ability to attain and maintain the air quality standards for smog.