Clean Air Act: Key Stakeholders' Views on Revisions to the New Source Review Program
Highlights
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revisions to the New Source Review (NSR) program to control industrial emissions have drawn attention from state and local agencies that implement the program, as well as industry and environmental and health groups. Under the revisions, companies may not have to install pollution controls when making some facility changes. GAO was asked to obtain the opinions of state air quality officials and other stakeholders on the impact of both the final and proposed revisions EPA issued in December 2002. GAO obtained survey responses from NSR program managers in 44 states and certain localities and contacted six environmental and health groups, and eight industry groups active in the NSR debate. Survey details are available in GAO-04-337SP.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental Protection Agency | To ensure that state and local air quality agencies are adequately equipped to implement the new NSR rules, as required by EPA, and that the rules do not have unintended effects on emissions and public health, the EPA Administrator should (1) provide state and local air quality agencies with assistance in implementing the December 2002 rule, (2) pending the court's decision on the equipment replacement rule, work with state and local air quality agencies to identify the data that the agency would need to monitor the effects of this rule and use the monitoring results to identify necessary changes, and (3) consider the state and stakeholder concerns about emissions and workload impacts that we identified before deciding whether to issue a final rule on the second proposed exclusion, the annual maintenance allowance exclusion. |
EPA did not implement these recommendations in light of court decisions that blocked implementation of the rules discussed in the report. Once this occurred, the recommendations were no longer relevant.
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