Recent Projects

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed to grandfather glider trucks, which have new truck bodies but old powertrains, into older emissions requirements. Our comments to EPA argue that the Agency improperly disregarded the effects that this exemption would have on air pollution, public health, and environmental quality, in violation of both the Clean Air Act and applicable executive orders on cost-benefit analysis. In particular, EPA failed to consider the extent to which its action will increase air pollution (and attendant environmental harms) by extending the useful economic life of older, dirtier powertrains.

EPA recently delayed the effective date of a rule that would have decreased the severity and number of chemical accidents at manufacturing facilities and refineries. State and NGO plaintiffs sued EPA over the delay, arguing that EPA did not have statutory authority to issue it, and that the delay was arbitrary and capricious. We filed a brief in support of petitioners arguing that EPA did not offer an adequate explanation for choosing to forgo the benefits of the chemical disaster rule.

In December 2016, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) finalized a rule that updates civil penalties for car manufacturers that violate fuel economy standards. NHTSA is now reconsidering the rule, claiming it would have a significant negative economic impact. The agency provides no evidence that economic circumstances have changed since the rule’s finalization to make the rule more costly. Our comments argue that the agency should not proceed with the proposed reconsideration, because it inadequately explained why it changed positions. If the agency does continue with the reconsideration, both the Inflation Adjustment Act and economic cost-benefit analysis would justify an update to the penalties rates rather than maintaining the original penalty rate from 1975.

In public comments to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, we highlight some critical problems with the agency’s cost-benefit analysis in its proposed revocation of standards to protect workers from exposure to beryllium. These ancillary standards were designed to protect workers in the construction and shipyard sectors.

In 2016, EPA issued a rule to decrease methane and volatile organic compound emissions from new, modified, and reconstructed sources in the oil and natural gas sector. EPA has now proposed to suspend some of the rule’s compliance obligations for two years while the agency decides whether and how to revise those requirements. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected an earlier attempt by EPA to stay the methane rule for 90 days, and our comments argue that the new proposal is similarly unlawful.

Policy Integrity has filed comments opposing EPA’s proposal to issue a second stay of the compliance deadlines in the Effluent Rule—a rule that regulates toxic metal discharges from power plants. As we explained in our comments to EPA, EPA has no legal authority for the proposed stay. In addition, EPA failed to provide a reasoned explanation for the stay because it ignored the impact that the stay will have on the benefits of the Effluent Rule.

EPA has suspended the compliance deadlines in a regulation on power plant wastewater discharges, which limits plants from releasing certain toxic metals into lakes and rivers. We submitted a “friend of the court” brief in the legal challenge to the suspension. Our brief argues that the decision to suspend the rule was arbitrary and capricious because EPA focused only on amorphous compliance costs and ignored the effects of pollution that will continue to be discharged while the rule is suspended. As we explain in the brief, it is fundamentally irrational to make a decision based on such a one-sided analysis, and the suspension should be vacated.