Sierra Club Slams Pruitt’s EPA for Denying Pollution Protections for the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic Region

Baltimore, MD--The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied a request by eight Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states today to require a handful of states to the west and south of them to participate in additional safeguards reducing smog pollution in the region. In a 2013 petition filing, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont, stated that pollution from neighboring states such as Kentucky and Virginia have consistently carried over into their regions, keeping them from being able to meet federal clean air safeguards and polluting their communities.

The EPA denied the request in part by claiming there are better tools under the Clean Air Act for downwind states to address interstate pollution - tools which Pruitt’s EPA has failed to use despite multiple state requests.

In response Mark Kresowik, Eastern Region Deputy Director for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign issued the following statement:

“Once again, Scott Pruitt refuses to do his job and protect the health of communities to instead benefit his polluting cronies--but this time he’s harming the health of an entire region. This decision is particularly egregious because Pruitt is failing to act using the tools he claims to prefer for addressing cross-state pollution. Pruitt’s EPA has missed mandatory deadlines to respond to multiple “Good Neighbor” petitions from Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland to reduce pollution from coal plants in other states. For example, Brunner Island, one of the largest coal-fired plants in the region still fails to operate with the most effective modern pollution controls that could limit pollution contributing to asthma-causing smog.”