Obama Sides with Polluters in Delaying Smog Protections

 

CONTACT:   Katie Feeney, kfeeney@cleanair.org, 215-567-4004 x 112

Joseph O. Minott, Esq., Executive Director, joe_minott@cleanair.org, 215-567-4004 x 116

 

(PHILADELPHIA – September 2, 2011) – “The Clean Air Council believes that today’s announcement from the White House that they will retreat from the fight to protect the health of American children, especially asthmatics, by delaying the proposed federal standard on ozone pollution represents a surrender to industry polluters and huge corporations at the expense of public health.”

 

“In U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s own letter to Sen. Thomas R. Carper on July 13, 2011, while the nation was enduring a slew of red- and orange-alert ozone action days, she says, “I had to choose between defending the Bush-era ozone standard in court or agreeing to reconsider the 2008 designation. I decided that reconsideration was the appropriate path based on concerns that the 2008 standards were not legally defensible given the scientific evidence in the record for the rulemaking, the requirements of the Clean Air Act and the recommendations of the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee (CASAC).”

 

“By putting off the updating of vital health standards that the White House considered indefensible by U.S. law, President Obama is caving to the wants of corporate polluters over the needs of the American people. A new standard for smog will prevent up to 12,000 premature deaths, 5,300 heart attacks and tens of thousands of cases of asthma and other serious respiratory illnesses each year. The Clean Air Act clearly requires the EPA to set protective standards against smog--based on science and the law. The White House now has polluted that process with politics.”

 

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