The Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday that it would eliminate limits on the amount of climate pollution that power plants are allowed to emit.
The decision could have implications for public health in Pima County, which received a failing score this year from the American Lung Association for its high levels of ozone pollution. Ground-level ozone, also known as smog, is created when pollutants such as power plant and vehicle emissions interact with sunlight.
Zealan Hoover, a D.C.-based former senior advisor to the EPA during the Biden administration, said public health would suffer as a result of the rollback.
“What’s particularly galling about the regulation that was released this week is that it does a very good job at counting the dollars it saves industry and compliance costs, but is much less interested in counting how many asthma attacks and even deaths will be caused by the increased pollution,” he said.
The EPA’s decision coincides with the beginning of peak-asthma week, the time of year that statistically sees the highest number of emergency room visits for asthma attacks. The asthma hospitalization rate in Pima County is higher than both state and national averages.
Though Pima County does not have any coal-burning power plants, it does have two major gas-powered plants. Under the new EPA guidelines, those plants would not be subject to emissions limits. Hoover said the real implication was for the plants that have yet to be built.
“In Arizona, what’s striking is that the state is about to build an enormous number of new power plants to serve data centers and other electricity needs,” he said.
“There’s more than a million Arizonans who are vulnerable to air pollution,” he continued. “And so this is not an abstract climate debate, it’s really a question about what kind of power infrastructure we're going to be locking Arizona and the rest of the country into for decades to come.”
Hoover noted that there will almost certainly be legal retaliation against the new regulation, and that states and counties do still have some influence over emissions within their own jurisdiction. If sustained, however, the new ruling would make it more difficult for future administrations to use the EPA to limit power plant emissions.
Arizona contains three of the top 100 most polluting power plants, which are based in Apache, Maricopa, and Navajo counties.
