Arizona Republican legislators are fighting back against the Biden Administration’s environmental schemes.
On Thursday, Republicans in the state legislature publicized the transmission of two letters to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma. The submissions were written to oppose the EPA’s proposed regulations on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles-Phase 3 and Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles.
The Arizona Senate Republican Caucus argued that “through these massive EPA regulations, the Biden Administration wants to force a transition from gas-powered vehicles, radically transforming our nation’s entire automotive industry and costing billions of dollars to achieve such lofty standards.” The Caucus added that “if these rules go into effect, two-thirds of all new vehicles sold in the United States are expected to be electric.”
In the letter to the EPA on the rule for Greenhouse Gas Emissions, the legislators asserted that the “EPA’s proposed rule will hurt Arizona families and workers by forcing them to buy vehicles they cannot afford, increasing the cost of goods they need, costing them jobs, decreasing the reliability of the electricity they depend on, and weakening our national security by making us dependent on China.”
While Hobbs uses taxpayer dollars for sex change surgeries and Mayes won't carry out her constitutional duties as AG, the @AZSenateGOP and @AZHouseGOP are stepping in to protect Arizonans from promised economic turmoil caused by the Biden Administration.https://t.co/mvz38bUEBO
And in the letter to the EPA on the regulation for Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards, Petersen and Toma presented ten reasons why the federal agency should reject the rule, making the case that the proposed rule “relies on unlawful and faulty calculations for the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, fails to consider safety issues, makes erroneous estimates about grid reliability, and makes erroneous estimates about energy security and critical mineral availability.”
Two additional legislators also weighed in on the EPA’s pending efforts. Senator Sine Kerr, the Chairman for the Senate Committee on Natural Resources, Energy & Water, said, “Not only does the production of these vehicles contribute to hazardous impacts on the environment, but their power source creates huge health and safety risks to drivers and first responders in the event of a crash or a fire. These radical regulations will have catastrophic impacts on lives and livelihoods, as well as an already strained power grid. We urge the EPA to do the right thing and protect our citizens by rejecting these rules.”
Senator Frank Carroll, the Vice Chairman for the Senate Committee on Transportation and Technology stated, “Forcing a transition to electric cars will make our country more dependent on China, threaten our national security, stretch our electric grid to the breaking point, make traffic crashes more dangerous and more deadly, increase the cost of goods and kill countless American jobs. The federal government’s assumption that the average person can afford a $60,000 electric vehicle is completely out of touch with reality and will greatly jeopardize our economy.”
Petersen and Toma’s actions on this front earned recognition from National Review, which featured the letters in a recent article. The Senate President spoke to the publication, saying that “we are stepping in the gap to hold the line against federal overreach.”
Josh Kredit, Chief of Staff for the Arizona Senate Republicans, shared the National Review letter on his Twitter account, adding, “The Arizona Legislature is working to protect consumers and filling the role of what an AG should be doing.”
Days after an AZ Free News report about Arizona’s largest county possibly taking steps toward compliance with extremely onerous environmental measures from the federal government, Republicans in the State Legislature announced their own move to counter these – and other – actions.
On Friday, the Arizona Senate and House Leadership teams announced the launch of “a study committee to examine recent local efforts attempting compliance with air quality standards set forth by the federal government.”
The committee, entitled the Joint Legislative Ad Hoc Committee on Air Quality and Energy, will meet to “gather information from experts and the public about local recommendations on rulemaking determinations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on ozone nonattainment.” Per the press release from the Legislature, the committee “will hear testimony and consider evidence on every angle, from sources of ozone and efforts to mitigate such sources, to the impacts of these mandates on Arizona families, workers, industries, consumer products and the economy, as well as the practicality of achieving recommended proposals and a variety of other issues deemed relevant to the investigation.”
Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma will each appoint five members to the committee. Two members have already been selected as the committee’s co-chairs: Senator Sine Kerr and Representative Gail Griffin, who are also chairs of the Senate and House Committees on Natural Resources, Energy and Water.
The two co-chairs of the committee issued comments in conjunction with Friday’s announcement. Senator Kerr stated: “While we strive to be proactive in protecting our environment, we certainly won’t blindly implement air quality policy dictated by the federal government without thorough investigation. We want to make sure the EPA’s requirements are realistic and won’t cause hardships for our residents, for our economy, or infringe on freedoms, as with what has so far transpired in California.”
And Representative Griffin said, “Arizona has natural occurrences of ozone such as from native vegetation and wildfires that we have absolutely no control over. We also receive significant ozone transports from Mexico and other states that need to be accounted for in federal models. We all want clean air, and I am looking forward to working with everyone on solutions.”
As AZ Free News reported on April 6, The Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) recently contracted with a California-based consulting firm to “identify and evaluate new and available ozone precursor control measures that could be implemented within the nonattainment area” – which is an “eight-hour ozone boundary for the 2015 ozone standard (2015 National Ambient Air Quality Standard),” following a little-discussed published rule from the EPA in fall 2022, which moved “the region up the severity ladder for ozone pollution, reclassifying the region from ‘marginal’ to ‘moderate’ nonattainment for the ozone pollution standard.”
The consultant’s Final Report this spring suggested “approximately 50% reduction in nonattainment area anthropogenic NOx and VOC emissions” in order to bring the region into compliance with the EPA’s standard by an August 3, 2024, deadline.
To meet this deadline, suggested measures were included to reduce ozone in the Maricopa Nonattainment Area to meet Clean Air Act requirements related to the 2015 ozone standard. Some of the suggested measures include adopting standards similar to California like banning the internal combustion engine, banning gas appliances, and a host of regulations on various business activities.
There is a tight turnaround for approval of these drastic measures to cut emissions in Maricopa County. Before the end of April, the “MAG Regional Council may approve the Draft Suggested List of Measures” after receiving recommendations from the MAG Management Committee. Then, over this summer, “implementing entities provide commitments to implement measures, or reasoned justification for non-implementation, to MAG for inclusion in a nonattainment area state implementation plan submission to EPA.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
As many California residents head east to Arizona in response to policies they find objectionable, Maricopa County appears to be taking a leap toward adopting some of those same policies.
The Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) recently contracted with a California-based consulting firm to “identify and evaluate new and available ozone precursor control measures that could be implemented within the nonattainment area” – which is an “eight-hour ozone boundary for the 2015 ozone standard (2015 National Ambient Air Quality Standard). According to the Final Report from the consulting firm, the area runs north to south from the Yavapai County line to Hunt Highway; and west to east from 499th Avenue to the Gila and Pinal County lines.
One of the geneses of this report stems from a little-discussed published rule from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in fall 2022, which moved “the region up the severity ladder for ozone pollution, reclassifying the region from ‘marginal’ to ‘moderate’ nonattainment for the ozone pollution standard.
In a press release dated September 2022, MAG revealed that “in 2015, the EPA tightened the ozone pollution standard from 75 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion,” and that the region encompassing “Maricopa County and portions of Pinal County missed that deadline.”
MAG wrote in the September release, that “the moderate nonattainment area classification requires new actions and measures, including:
New control measures to reduce the types of emissions that create ozone.
Emission offset requirement for new, large facilities locating in the nonattainment area and major expansions to large, existing facilities, which are required to offset every ton of emissions by 1.15 tons.
Contingency measures (i.e., measures to be deployed if the nonattainment area does not meet yearly emission reduction milestones).
Potential emission controls for intrastate facilities or other emission sources located outside the Phoenix-Mesa nonattainment area.”
Enter the consultant’s Final Report this spring, which suggested “approximately 50% reduction in nonattainment area anthropogenic NOx and VOC emissions” in order to bring the region into compliance with the EPA’s standard by an August 3, 2024, deadline. An Arizona Department of Environmental Quality Division Director recently admitted that “Maricopa County businesses and residents have done a fantastic job of reducing ozone pollution by 12.5 percent since 2000.” But Maricopa County would have to exponentially and substantially pick up the pace of slashing emissions in just over one year – compared to the two-plus decades of work to cut pollution by 12.5 percent. And that is likely impossible.
But MAG is still planning to move forward with this plan, and to meet this deadline, it included suggested measures to reduce ozone in the Maricopa Nonattainment Area to meet Clean Air Act requirements related to the 2015 ozone standard. Some of the suggested measures include adopting standards similar to California like banning the internal combustion engine, banning gas appliances, and a host of regulations on various business activities.
There is a tight turnaround for approval of these drastic measures to cut emissions in Maricopa County. Before the end of April, the “MAG Regional Council may approve the Draft Suggested List of Measures” after receiving recommendations from the MAG Management Committee. Then, over this summer, “implementing entities provide commitments to implement measures, or reasoned justification for non-implementation, to MAG for inclusion in a nonattainment area state implementation plan submission to EPA.”
The EPA guidance instructs that “states should consider all available measures, including those being implemented in other areas, but must adopt measures for an area only if those measures are economically and technologically feasible and will advance the attainment date or are necessary for reasonable further progress.” According to the March 6 Draft Suggested List of Measures to Reduce Ozone in the Maricopa Nonattainment Area, “if an entity decides that a measure on the Suggested List is not available or feasible for implementation, the entity will provide a justification for why the measure is not available or feasible.”
Cities, towns, and Maricopa County may soon be forced to decide between complying with extremely onerous measures to bring down a tremendous amount of emissions in a hurry or losing out on a generous offering of federal dollars (along with financial penalties that could be levied against those jurisdictions), setting up a potential battle over federalism that will determine Maricopa County’s (and eventually Arizona’s) commitment to its libertarian and freedom-minded roots or deviation to California’s environmentalism policies and politics.
