Credit: (joiseyshowaa via Creative Commons/CC BY-SA 2.0)Four environmental groups are trying to force the Environmental Protection Agency to take actions to reduce harmful levels of smog in eight areas, including the New Jersey and New York metropolitan region.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the groups want the agency to downgrade its smog rating in eight areas from serious to severe, a designation that could lead to more stringent controls of ground-level ozone, or smog.
The eight areas are home to almost 50 million people and have some of the nation’s worst air quality. Ground-level ozone harms the health of people, wildlife and plants. New Jersey has never met the national health standard for the pollutant.
“The Biden EPA talks a good game, but when it takes a lawsuit to reduce dangerous smog levels, it shows polluters, not the scientists, are running the show,’’ said Robert Ukeiley, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity and one of the parties to the suit.
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Ozone pollution is linked to human health problems like asthma attacks and can cause premature death. Those most at risk include older adults, children and people who work outdoors.
In its latest assessment of air quality across the nation, the American Lung Association last fall found more than 40% of Americans contend with unhealthy levels of pollution. In that study, eight of New Jersey’s 21 counties received “F’’ grades for the high number of days when they violated the national air-quality standard for smog, a pollutant that forms on hot summer days.
Failure to reclassify
The EPA failed to reclassify the regions from “serious” to “severe” based on 2018-2020 monitoring for the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone, the lawsuit claims. Those regions are the Chicago-Naperville area for Illinois; Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston-Galveston-Brazonia areas of Texas; New York City metro areas, Connecticut; New York and New Jersey; nonmetro areas of Connecticut; Denver-Boulder-Fort Collins area of Colorado; western Nevada County in California; and Ventura County in California.
“The EPA’s failure to complete a simple task like downgrading the smog rating delays protection for almost 50 million people against this toxic threat,’’ said Kaya Allan Sugarman, the Center for Environmental Health’s director, also a party to the suit. “The ambient monitoring data shows these areas clearly have dangerous levels of smog that need to be addressed as quickly as possible.’’
In New Jersey, clean-energy advocates have pressed for more rapid electrification of the transportation sector, and eventually buildings and homes as the quickest way to phase out fossil fuels and the pollution they cause.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
