Thune’s amendment would require the EPA to consider costs and feasibility and use a model that does not include co-benefits associated with a reduction in ozone
Thune Seeks to Prevent Trillion-Dollar-per-Year EPA Regulation
By Heritage Foundation Nicolas Loris——Bio and Archives--May 12, 2014
As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moves forward with more stringent ozone regulations, it could be the costliest EPA regulation in history. Senator John Thune (R–SD) wants to make sure that doesn’t happen.
In 2011, President Obama asked then-EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the agency’s draft for more stringent National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Although Jackson begrudgingly complied, the EPA moved forward to implement the Bush Administration’s 2008 proposed standards of 75 parts per billion (ppb) of ozone, down from 84 ppb. A ppb is the concentration of ozone in the air over an eight-hour period; for reference, a drop of gasoline in a tanker truck is 1 ppb.
The massive costs of tightening the standard have outweighed the negligible environmental benefits in the past, and enforcing the 75-ppb standard will have diminishing marginal returns—quite possibly to a vanishing point. Even the EPA acknowledged that lowering the ozone standard to 70 ppb would lower asthma and respiratory diseases by only a few tenths of a percent.
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