Officials from Connecticut and eight other states are again urging the Environmental Protection Agency to push a nine other states to tighten their air-pollution regulations.
In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy this week, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Rob Klee and eight of his counterparts from Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states pressed their case for EPA to force the nine upwind states to take action to reduce air pollution, which ultimately crosses state lines and can cause health problems.
Connecticut and its partners first asked the EPA in 2013 to crack down on the states, which include Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
The EPA didn’t rule on the petition by a 2015 deadline. Instead, it facilitated a collaborative processes between the two groups of states.
But that process, though it led to some voluntary agreement to reduce air pollution, did not accomplish “legally enforceable control measures,” the petitioners said this week.
