U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, today sent a follow-up letter to Dr. H. Christopher Frey, Chair of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) Ozone Review Panel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), responding to CASAC's acknowledgement of their duty under the Clean Air Act to advise the Administrator of the adverse effects that may result from strategies needed to attain a lower ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS). In his letter, Vitter urges CASAC to convene an independent panel to identify those strategies and their adverse effects.
"The EPA's proposed ozone standard revision will put most of the country into non-attainment, and has the potential cost of over $90 billion annually," said Vitter. "I don't agree with their proposal for those reasons, but at the very least, the review process needs to be very thorough and transparent. Before the rulemaking process moves forward, we have to make sure that EPA and the CASAC ozone review panel are using the best data available and that they aren't skipping any steps that are required by law."
In the letter, Vitter notes that CASAC failed to comply with the Clean Air Act (CAA) by omitting an evaluation of adverse effects in their June 2014 recommendations letter to EPA regarding the Second Draft Policy Assessment for the Review of the Ozone NAAQS.
Vitter has been urging CASAC and EPA to move forward in the ozone NAAQS rulemaking process in a transparent manner, including the need to address error corrections and risk data errors in the scientific assessments used.
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