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A mysterious industry group asked Utah regulators to weaken a new state rule on greenhouse gasses this fall even before the regulation was finalized.
While the Utah Air Quality Board hasn't approved the change — which would invalidate state rules on greenhouse gases if a court anywhere in the country upholds a challenge — it has put the proposal out for public comment beginning Jan. 1. Meanwhile, critics call the provision a "poison pill" meant to kill the nation's new greenhouse gas program.
Officials defended the idea of revisiting the regulation even though they acknowledge knowing little about the Air Permitting Forum, the group behind the plan.
Cheryl Heying, director of the Utah Division of Air Quality, said the issue is "ripe for public discussion."
The board voted to start a public review of the Air Permitting Forum's request just minutes after finalizing Utah's version of the federal regulation called the "tailoring rule."
Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, said the proposed invalidation clause would undermine just the kind of certainty that industry has been clamoring for from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"There's a pattern we're seeing from a number of industry groups to derail this entire program," he said. "That's unfortunate."
The "tailoring rule" is the regulation EPA put forward to monitor large emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses blamed for climate change. Each state then develops its own regulations to carry out the federal policy.
Like other pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act, the greenhouse gas rule is hotly contested and expected to be the subject of legal disputes for years to come. Already there are dozens of lawsuits challenging the federal regulation, although two key rulings in December upheld it.
Utah was like most other states in developing its own version of the tailoring rule in time for the EPA's January deadline. About one dozen Utah businesses would be covered, and about half of them already face Clean Air Act permitting for other major pollutants they release into the air, including ozone, fine-particle pollution and hazardous air pollutants.
Exactly how the new regulations will affect the Air Permitting Forum is impossible to say at this point, since it is unclear who the group's members are in Utah or elsewhere.
The Salt Lake Tribune made repeated unsuccessful requests this month to speak with attorney Chuck Knauss, whose profile for a Washington, D.C., law firm lists the group as a client, and to the forum's executive director, Shannon S. Broome. And there is no website describing the groups members and goals.
In one e-mail, Broome said she was too busy to talk and did not elaborate on the Air Permitting Forum's membership in Utah.
"The Air Permitting Forum is a coalition of Fortune 50/100 companies that advocates on environmental permitting issues that affect their operating facilities," she said in the e-mail.
"Our members are in general manufacturing, not utilities [as utilities have their own trade group]," she added. "The Forum has been working on [greenhouse gas] permitting issues across the country, and Utah is one of the first states to move forward."
Broome said Colorado, which is in the same EPA region as Utah, adopted a similar provision. But the EPA said the Colorado Legislature has yet to finalize "the recision clause."
As Utah's Air Quality Board discussed the Air Permitting Forum's request Dec. 1, several board members, including Heying and Department of Environmental Quality Director Amanda Smith, supported putting it out for public comment, even though no one from the group was on hand.
Even Regg Olsen, who oversees air permitting for the state, said he knew little more about the group than what was contained in Broome's three pages of comments.
Find out more
O Read about Utah's greenhouse-gas regulation at the state's Web page on the rule › http://bit.ly/cfRl3u.