1 day Ago By Hiroko Tabuchi and Lisa Friedman
Two chemical industry groups are asking President Trump for a complete exemption to free their factories from new limits on hazardous air pollution. Under a new rule finalized by the Biden administration last year, chemical plants would soon be required to monitor and reduce emissions of toxic pollutants, like ethylene oxide, a cancer-causing ingredient used in antifreeze and plastics. Now the two groups, the American Chemistry Council and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represent the nation’s major chemical companies, are seeking a temporary presidential waiver for all polluters to the rule.
The new requirements burden their member corporations with “significantly costly requirements on an unworkable timeline,” the groups wrote in a letter dated March 31 that was obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental advocacy group. In the letter addressed to Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the groups said that the cost to companies of meeting even parts of the new rule would exceed $50 billion, significantly more than the agency’s estimate of $1.8 billion.
The request came after the E.P.A.
that they could apply for waivers to major clean-air rules by emailing the agency. The E.P.
A. pointed to a section of that enables the president to temporarily exempt industrial facilities from new rules if the technology required to meet those rules isn’t available, and if it’s in the interest of national security. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
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