Unhappy Milestone: EPA Promulgates 50th Clean Air Act FIP

In today’s Federal Register, the EPA finalized its 50^th regulatory takeover of a state Clean Air Act program, also known as a Federal Implementation Plan (“FIP”). Today, the victim was Washington. To be precise, the agency imposed visibility improvement requirements, known as Regional Haze, on a refinery and two aluminum manufacturing plants in the Evergreen State. While compliance costs are minimal for this particular regulatory takeover, the unfortunate effect of today’s action is to subject three sources to the purview of a Clean Air Act regulatory regime against the wishes of the State, and for no discernible environmental improvement. Below, I’ve provided an ongoing analysis compiled by globalwarming.org, of Clean Air Act FIPs rendered by each of the last four Presidents. As is rendered clear by the chart, President Obama has taken a very different view of Clean Air Act cooperative federalism than has his predecessors. Evidently, Obama’s is the age of uncooperative federalism.