Airing Concerns
Proposed EPA rules on air quality standards have some small businesses gasping for breath.
Proposed EPA rules on air quality standards have some small
businesses gasping for breath.
Chemicals and soot aren't the only air pollutants of concern
in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) hotly
contested rule-making on ozone and particulate matter levels in the
atmosphere. Political rhetoric quickly reached suffocating levels
in Washington as soon as the EPA issued its proposed rule in
November.
Trade associations and lobbying groups nationwide immediately
sent out broadsides condemning the EPA and noting the likely
apocalyptic impact on small business of reducing the ozone standard
from .12 parts ozone per million parts air (ppm) measured over one
hour to .08 ppm measured over eight hours, and of reducing the size
of particulate matter (PM) that would be regulated from 10 microns
or smaller to 2.5 microns.
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But more than a few small-business hands in Washington were
quick to point out that the new standards would affect only a few
small-business sectors: service stations/convenience stores,
restaurants, trucking companies and some construction businesses.
It is big business that is much more likely to be hurt,
particularly by the PM standard, which could require the Fortune
500 crowd to spend substantial sums on new controls for factory
combustion sources.
The majority of small businesses, if impacted at all, will be
hurt indirectly. Mary Bernhard, manager of environment policy for
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says cities that will become ozone
nonattainment areas as a result of the new standards will have to
consider transportation reduction measures that could significantly
impact local economic development. This might translate into
shopping centers not being built, the end of free parking at
shopping malls, and bans on drive-thru service at local
restaurants.
EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner has gone out of her way to
emphasize that she is open to public comments from small business
on the new standards. She seems to be laying the groundwork so she
could retreat on the ozone standard if politics so dictated.
"They potentially left themselves some wiggle room,"
agrees Bernhard.
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