California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols has sent a letter to Lisa Jackson, the new designated administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, requesting that she revisit the decision by previous EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson that denied California a waiver to enforce its clean car law.
“We feel strongly that under its new leadership, EPA will recognize that the decision made by the former administrator to deny California the waiver to enforce our clean car law was flawed, factually and legally, in fundamental ways,” Nichols wrote in the letter dated Wednesday, Jan. 21. Should the EPA grant the waiver, California and 13 other states will begin a program intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles 30 percent by 2016.
In the letter, Nichols points out that Johnson’s decision improperly evaluated California’s need for greenhouse gas standards in complete isolation, without also considering the context of California’s complete motor vehicle emissions control program. This created a new set of hurdles and test that no other waiver request had triggered, Nichols wrote.
Nichols also indicates that California believes that EPA can reconsider its decision in a manner that fulfills its public notice and comment obligations without undue delay. This is because the issues to be reconsidered are limited in scope, and there already has been extensive comment input by stakeholders and the public on the waiver request, she argues.
The federal Clean Air Act allows California, because of its smog problems, to exceed nationwide air-quality rules if the state obtains a waiver from EPA, which had not denied any of the state’s applications since the law took effect more than 30 years ago.
Johnson said Dec. 19, 2007, that President Bush had just signed a law increasing gas mileage standards for cars and trucks and that a nationwide approach to controlling greenhouse gases was preferable to state-by-state regulation. Johnson also said California didn’t qualify for a waiver because greenhouse gases were not unique to the state.
California sued the Bush administration on Jan. 2, 2008, over its refusal to grant the waiver; the lawsuit against EPA was joined by 15 other states that had adopted similar laws or were in the process of doing so, along with four environmental organizations.
