Draft Air Pollution Rules for Boilers Were Too Strict, EPA Air Chief Says
By: Gabriel Nelson
The New York Times, Greenwire
Having taken comment on controversial new regulations for industrial boilers, U.S. EPA now believes that some pollution limits in the draft rules “were simply too tight to be able to be achievable,” the agency’s air chief said today, signaling that the agency is readying final regulations that won’t be as tough on businesses.
When EPA issued the proposal in April, the agency was scrambling to meet a court deadline, said Gina McCarthy, the agency’s assistant administrator for air and radiation, on the sidelines of an event in Washington, D.C. There are many industries that use boilers to power their operations, and the agency had very little information on some of them. As a result, she said, the proposed standards were “very difficult to achieve in certain sectors — which we did not know,” she said.
“Now that we have the information at hand, it changes the calculation entirely,” McCarthy added.
