Groups Challenge Trump Administration’s Phoenix Ozone Pollution Waiver

Groups Challenge Trump Administration's Phoenix Ozone Pollution Waiver

EPA blamed city's air violations on Asia, Mexico in granting free pass to pollute

Contacts

Perry Wheeler, Earthjustice, [email protected]

Chandra Rosenthal, PEER, [email protected]

Amy Dominguez, Sierra Club, [email protected]

Ivan Moreno, NRDC, [email protected]

Ryan Maher, Center for Biological Diversity, [email protected]

Conservation groups today challenged the Trump Administration's waiver of stronger air pollution controls for Phoenix, one of the nation's smoggiest cities. The groups' petition for review, filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, claims that the Trump administration illegally granted the waiver based on alleged impacts from international emissions. While historically this waiver has been limited to cities on international borders, the Trump administration pointed to emissions from as far away as Asia in giving Phoenix a free pass to pollute.

The EPA also recently proposed granting a similar waiver for Utah's Northern Wasatch Front, which includes Salt Lake City. Conservation groups expect this exemption could be finalized in the coming months. EPA's new approach of granting these exemptions routinely, instead of in rare exceptions, threatens to undermine efforts to reduce harmful ozone pollution nationwide.

"The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to let the state's worst polluters off the hook for their contribution to our awful air quality by blaming international emissions for Arizona's pollution," said Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter Director Sandy Bahr. "High ozone levels threaten our health, make it harder to breathe, and shorten our lives. We need EPA to strengthen requirements to reduce the pollution that we can control, but what we're seeing is the complete opposite. With Arizona experiencing one of the highest asthma mortality rates in the country, EPA should be doing everything possible to protect communities, not polluters."

"It's important to recognize what Trump's EPA has and has not done with this decision. The agency has not reduced ozone pollution or mitigated its harms one iota," said Ryan Maher, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Instead, through a paperwork exercise and fuzzy math, EPA has sidestepped life-saving pollution reductions, for the benefit of corporate polluters."

The Phoenix waiver is the first granted by the EPA for a community that is not located on an international border and the first reliant upon air pollution purportedly from Asia. Phoenix has also failed to adopt all the required local pollution-reducing measures, which disqualifies the area from receiving a waiver under the EPA's longstanding reading of the 179B statute.

The Phoenix-Mesa area was classified as "Moderate" nonattainment under the Clean Air Act's National Ambient Air Quality Standard in 2022 for its failure to meet 2015 ozone requirements by 2021. The Moderate classification triggered a new attainment deadline of August 2024, along with the need for an updated State Implementation Plan. Phoenix missed both deadlines. In addition to submitting its plan more than two years late, Phoenix failed to meet the ozone standards. The Maricopa Association of Governments instead submitted a 179B waiver request to the EPA relying on international emissions. The exemption lets Phoenix avoid a downgrade in classification, meaning the area does not have to take stronger protective measures to control local emissions, endangering its residents' health.

"The Trump Administration's war on science has arguably hit EPA the hardest of all agencies," says Chandra Rosenthal, public lands director for PEER. "From eliminating entire divisions, cutting its research and scientific investigation roles, to prompting a mass exodus of staff, EPA has been decimated. The only thing left to justify EPA's decision in Arizona is politics and corporate pandering."

The American Lung Association gave Phoenix-Mesa an 'F' on ozone pollution in its most recent State of the Air report, ranking it as the fourth most polluted city in the nation.

"The Environmental Protection Agency has failed the people of Phoenix with this illegal ozone pollution waiver," said Alexandra Schluntz, senior attorney with Earthjustice's Rocky Mountain Office. "To rely upon purported pollution from thousands of miles away to sidestep the requirements of the Clean Air Act is an insult to the communities that call this region home, particularly those most impacted by ozone pollution including children, the elderly, and those with asthma. Phoenix has repeatedly failed to address its poor air quality and should be held to the requirements of the law by the agency that was created to enforce them."

"Trump's EPA is refusing to implement life-saving standards with a story only this administration could tell - that a trickle of pollution drifting from China and Mexico is what's fouling Phoenix's air," said Abi Vijayan, senior climate attorney at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). "The math is pure fiction. The harm to Phoenix families won't be."

Earthjustice, on behalf of Sierra Club, filed today's petition for review alongside Center for Biological Diversity, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and NRDC.

Additional Resources

• About the Rocky Mountain Office

About Earthjustice

Earthjustice is the premier nonprofit environmental law organization. We wield the power of law and the strength of partnership to protect people's health, to preserve magnificent places and wildlife, to advance clean energy, and to combat climate change. We are here because the earth needs a good lawyer.