DNREC gave residents the chance to comment Monday on a proposed EPA action to deny Delaware’s petitions for cleaner air.
In late May, the EPA proposed an action to deny four petitions Delaware filed in 2016 urging the federal agency to require emissions reductions from certain up-wind power plants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
State officials claim these plants are contributing to smog in Delaware.
DNREC Secretary Shawn Garvin says the EPA verbally denied his department’s requests to extend the public comment period on the proposed action and to hold the public hearing in Delaware, rather than Washington, DC.
“We decided that it was important to give Delawareans an opportunity to have their voices heard, so we held this hearing … to collect that information.”
Monday’s meeting at Delaware Technical Community College’s Stanton campus included comment from the American Lung Association, the Sierra Club, and several other concerned groups and citizens, who mentioned the effect of Delaware’s poor air quality on those with asthma.
Garvin says transcriptions of the comments made Monday will be packaged with formal comments from DNREC and the State, and will be submitted to the EPA before the end of the public comment period.
He says a DNREC representative also testified at the EPA’s public hearing on June 22.
According to the EPA, Delaware’s 2016 petitions claim that emissions from individual sources in Pennsylvania or West Virginia contribute significantly to the state’s nonattainment of the 2008 and 2015 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standards.
DNREC wants the EPA to require the upwind power plants to use pollution reducing technology, which state officials claim some of the plants already have, but don’t use.
According to DNREC, more than 90% of Delaware’s unhealthy levels of ozone come from out of state pollution sources.
However, the EPA said in a statement that “Delaware … has [not] met their burden to demonstrate that the sources they named emit or would emit ozone forming pollutants at levels that violate the Clean Air Act’s good neighbor provision for the 2008 and 2015 ozone standards.”
At Monday’s meeting, Senator Tom Carper said the Clean Air Act’s “good neighbor” provision should prevent what he calls the “lion’s share” of Delaware’s air pollution coming from other states.
“The right thing to do is to remind the EPA and if necessary, the courts, if the EPA doesn’t come around—remind them of the Golden Rule,” he said.
Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association of the Mid-Atlantic, said the Association frequently notes air quality issues in Delaware, but that these are not entirely the state’s fault.
“Delaware has done so much over the years to really try to get out ahead of this issue, that we’re really all the more outraged that EPA has denied this petition,” he said, “when up-wind sources are getting away with not using air pollution controls that are installed, or not even having air pollution controls.”
Sources of pollution targeted in the petitions include the Harrison Power Plant in West Virginia and the Brunner Island Power Plant near York, Pennsylvania
Maryland filed a similar petition in 2016 regarding 36 electric generating units in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The EPA has proposed denying this petition as well.
DNREC Secretary Shawn Garvin says if the EPA ends up denying Delaware’s petitions, the Department’s next option would be to take legal action against the EPA.
The EPA’s public comment period ends July 23rd.
