Trump Administration to Take Away Transportation Funding for CA Due to Its Dirty Air

September 25, 2019

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(Our Daily Planet) Looking to take further action against the State of California, the Environmental Protection Agency under the guise of enforcing the state’s non-compliance with the Clean Air Act (CAA) says it will take away billions in federal funds provided to the state of California to implement low carbon transportation projects. The Sacramento Bee reported yesterday that the EPA chief, Andrew Wheeler, wrote the California Air Resources Board, that the state had the “worst air quality in the United States” and had “failed to carry out its most basic tasks” under the federal law. The EPA reviews plans by states to come into compliance with the Clean Air Act regulation of six major air pollutants, and if they don’t then the law allows the EPA to pull funding for roads and other transportation projects.

Why This Matters: According to the Bee, when President Donald Trump entered office, the Administration faced a backlog of over 700 plans, and roughly 140 of those that remain are from California. California’s air is not crystal clear — but now that is also BECAUSE of the Trump Administration, not only the state of California. EPA is blocking some of California’s most important efforts to improve air quality — like the recent revocation of the state’s clean car waiver.

This penalty against a state for non-compliance has rarely been exercised to withhold transportation funding. It is intended to be used to stop road and highway building because more roads generally lead to more cars and more air pollution. And this EPA has issued many waivers of compliance to states — indeed that is one reason why air quality has declined in the last two years. Just last week the Administration gave the state of Arkansas a waiver of the very same requirements, thereby allowing even more pollution to occur in Arkansas and imposing no penalty for non-compliance with their own state air quality improvement plans. It is just another example of the Trump administration’s corruption — using the power of the Presidency to penalize his political opponents. Shame on all of them.

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And according to The Washington Post, three dozen other states also had counties that did not meet the same air standards — states like Texas, for example, which had 40 violations of federal air quality standards in 25 counties.

California Docked Billions

According to the letter from EPA, California has less than three weeks to new air quality improvement plans addressing non-compliance in 82 municipalities facing noncompliance. If they fail or if EPA disapproves those plans, then California could begin to lose federal highway funding which would be in the billions because California receives more highway funds than any other state in the country.

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Read the full EPA letter to California here. READ MORE

EPA’S NEW THREAT TO CALIFORNIA: (Politico’s Morning Energy)

Trump officials threaten to withhold highway funding from California for its ‘chronic air quality problems’ (Washington Post; includes VIDEO)

CALIFORNIA VS. EPA GOES ANOTHER ROUND: (Politico's Morning Energy)

EPA tells California it is ‘failing to meet its obligations’ to protect the environment (Washington Post)

THE LATEST CALIFORNIA CHAPTER: (Politico's Morning Energy)

Critics wailed that Obama’s EPA was out of control. But look at Trump’s. (Washington Post)

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: EPA’S NEW THREAT TO CALIFORNIA: The Trump administration is again escalating its confrontation with California, this time with a threat from EPA to go after the state’s highway money. In a letter reported late Monday by McClatchy, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler says the state is behind the curve on submitting State Implementation Plans required by the Clean Air Act. He gives the California Air Resources Board until Oct. 10 to begin rescinding its SIPs that he said “have fundamental issues related to approvability” and begin submitting new ones.

The letter comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the state’s waiver to enforce stricter regulations on automobile emissions. It would take two years from a formal EPA declaration to activate sanctions on federal highway money, an enforcement tool EPA has used rarely in the decades since the Clean Air Act was written. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: CALIFORNIA VS. EPA GOES ANOTHER ROUND: Environmental advocates and state officials say EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler's threat to withhold California highway money over air quality compliance on Tuesday is a political attack, not a sincere effort to clean up the state's air, Pro's Alex Guillén reports. "It's obviously not sincere. It's obviously an effort to persecute California," said Bill Magavern, policy director for the California green group Coalition for Clean Air. EPA's threat comes a week after it revoked the state’s waiver to enforce stricter auto emissions standards.

On Tuesday, a senior EPA official defended the agency's threat, arguing it's not targeting the state. But California regulators said EPA failed to approve the state's pollution plans and is upset by "paperwork issues of its own creation."

California tends to submit more SIPs than other states because its regulatory oversight is divided into dozens of air quality management districts. That has also strained EPA's ability to process SIPs, said Janet McCabe, a former EPA air chief, but she criticized the administration's response. "EPA is supposed to be helping the states work through these things. This seems like a pretty clearly political move," she said. READ MORE

Excerpt from Washington Post: California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said in a statement Tuesday that he and other state officials “won’t be intimidated by this brazen political stunt.”

Wheeler’s letter, Newsom said, “is a threat of pure retaliation.” “While the White House tries to bully us and concoct new ways to make our air dirtier, California is defending our state’s clean air laws from President Trump’s attacks. We won’t go back to the days when our air was the color of mud. We won’t relive entire summers when spending time outside amounted to a public health risk.”

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Former EPA officials said the letter was an unusual step for the agency to take. “I’ve never seen a letter like this before,” said Janet McCabe, who served as acting assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation under President Barack Obama. “It’s ironic that EPA is taking California to task for not solving the air quality problem when for decades the state has been moving forward with the most aggressive clear air rules and programs in the nation.”

She added: “That’s clearly threatening language in there.”

California officials have repeatedly argued that they have sought to impose stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles as part of a broader effort to tackle smog in the state. “This letter appeared only days after EPA attacked our state authority on cars, increasing air pollution while at the same time limiting our ability to reduce it,” CARB Executive Officer Richard Corey said in a statement responding to Wheeler’s letter.

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Smog levels rose so high there in the 1950s and ′60s that Congress gave California a special status under the Clean Air Act to set its own pollution standards.

A senior EPA official, briefing reporters on Tuesday, said California’s pollution situation was “unique” and required the aggressive step. But about three dozen other states also had counties that did not meet air standards for six pollutants, as of the end of August. Texas, for example, had 40 violations of federal air quality standards in 25 counties.

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The EPA is giving California until Oct. 10 to cooperate. If the state does not, the agency said it will begin disapproving its air quality plans. After that point, the agency can block approvals for industrial operations that want to expand within 18 months, and withhold highway funding within 24 months.

Bill Becker, president of Becker Environmental Consulting, said in a phone interview that it did not make sense for the administration to punish California for not addressing air pollution in the state when it was simultaneously blocking its efforts to cut down on vehicle emissions. READ MORE

“The agency is aware of the growing homelessness crisis developing in major California cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the impact of this crisis on the environment,” Wheeler wrote. “Based upon data and reports, the agency is concerned that California’s implementation of federal environmental laws is failing to meet its obligations required under delegated federal programs.”

Under extraordinary circumstances, the EPA can take over enforcement of federal air and water pollution laws. In the letter, Wheeler gives Newsom 30 days to demonstrate that California “has the adequate authority and capability to address these issues.”

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In the past month alone, the administration has moved to revoke the state’s long-standing right to limit air pollution from cars, began investigating an agreement with four automakers for possible antitrust violations and threatened to withhold federal highway funds if California does not do more to clean up its air.

“There’s a common theme in the news coming out of this White House this week. The president is abusing the powers of the presidency and weaponizing government to attack his political opponents,” Newsom spokesman Nathan Click said in an email Thursday. “This is not about clean air, clean water or helping our state with homelessness. This is political retribution against California, plain and simple.”

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Last year, the EPA estimated that 3,508 community water systems were out of compliance with health-based standards. In its oversight letter, the agency cited 202 water systems in California that have recently reported drinking water problems. The state has 82 areas that don’t meet air standards for six pollutants, and most of its plans to clean them up are still not approved by the EPA. But about three dozen other states also had counties that did not meet those national benchmarks.

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Earlier this week, EPA officials suggested California authorities are doing an inadequate job of curbing air and water pollution and ranked the state toward the bottom in the nation. On Monday, Wheeler notified the California Air Resources Board that it risks losing billions in highway funding if it did not offer updated plans on how it plans to meet federal health-based standards for soot, smog and other pollutants. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: THE LATEST CALIFORNIA CHAPTER: The emergence of an EPA letter Thursday to California Gov. Gavin Newsom that described several shortfalls in California's efforts to meet water quality standards was largely dismissed by environmentalists and state officials, Pro's Annie Snider and Debra Kahn report. It's the latest back-and-forth between the state and the Trump administration.

Newsom on Thursday charged that Trump was "weaponizing" the federal government. Administrator Andrew Wheeler asserted the agency's concern about California's handling of drinking water and wastewater stretches further back than Trump's comments on the matter last week. "We were already working on this, this letter, and taking a look at how California is implementing their programs predated my conversations with the president," Wheeler said.

Environmentalists said the criticism levied specifically against San Francisco's water was misplaced — especially from an EPA that recently rolled back environmental protections for bodies of water under the Water of the U.S. rule. "For them to come out and say that about San Francisco, it's really laughable. Laughable, atrocious, fake, mind-game. You name it," said Sejal Choksi-Chugh of San Francisco Baykeeper.

STATES DEMAND MEETING WITH EPA: The Environmental Council of the States is demanding a meeting with Wheeler and other senior agency officials, Debra reports. "ECOS is seriously concerned about a number of unilateral actions by U.S. EPA that run counter to the spirit of cooperative federalism and to the appropriate relationship between the federal government and the states who are delegated the authority to implement federal environmental statutes," Executive Director Donald Welsh wrote in a letter to Wheeler Thursday.

In response, EPA said it has made it a priority "to restore the appropriate balance between federal and state management of water resources within state borders," listing its approval of state water quality standards and deletions from the National Priorities List as examples. "On these and many other issues important to States, EPA will continue to work directly with State Departments of Environmental Quality on issues important to assist them in their missions to protect human health and the environment," the EPA statement said. READ MORE