EPA set to scrap Obama-era Utah haze plan

摘要

EPA is poised to officially scrap an Obama-era haze reduction plan that would have required two coal-fired power plants in central Utah to install stringent new controls for nitrogen oxides. Under a recently signed draft rule, the agency would drop the 2016 regional haze plan that would have required the Hunter and Huntington power plants to add selective catalytic reduction to address NOx emissions. Instead, EPA seeks to go with a state alternative that would allow both plants to upgrade existing combustion controls and also factor in the emissions reductions that resulted from the shutdown of another PacifiCorp plant in 2015, according to the draft rule, set for publication in tomorrow's Federal Register. The move is the latest in a series by the Trump administration to reverse Obama-era requirements for older coal-fired plants to retool their pollution controls to comply with the regional haze program, which aims to restore natural visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas by 2064 (Greenwire, Sept. 26, 2019). While the Obama EPA had predicted that its strategy would eventually cut NOx emissions by almost 10,000 tons per year and help clear the air at the Grand Canyon and seven other Western parks, PacifiCorp and Utah officials had challenged the plan in federal court, arguing it was prohibitively expensive and would yield little in visibility benefits (Greenwire, Sept. 6, 2016). In 2017, a federal appellate court stayed the plan after the Trump administration agreed to revisit it (Greenwire, Sept. 11, 2017).