Two Clean Air Act (CAA) provisions governing deadlines for submission of state implementation plans (SIPs) to bring areas into attainment with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for particulate matter (PM) were at the core of a recent decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
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In a petition to the court, WildEarth Guardians and others argued that the EPA must retroactively require states to meet the deadlines for SIP submissions and PM attainment specified in CAA Part D, Subpart 4, after the D.C. Circuit determined in an earlier case that the Agency was incorrectly imposing the more lenient deadlines allowed under Part D, Subpart 1. The panel concluded that such a retroactive requirement would have denied states CAA’s voluntary area reclassification option, which provides more time for SIP submissions. According to the court, such a denial would not be a reasonable exercise of EPA’s statutory authority. The panel therefore denied the petition.