Trump air quality, permitting rollbacks could hit Maine harder than most

Moves by the Trump administration this month to weaken environmental regulations could have disproportionate impacts on Maine, a state downwind of high-pollution areas.

Citing the economic hardships caused by COVID-19, the Trump administration announced two policy changes June 4. The White House directed federal agencies to expedite the environmental review of infrastructure projects required under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act and other federal laws, and the EPA said it would tweak the cost-benefit analysis it uses to determine emissions limits under the Clean Air Act.

Maine depends more than other states on federal standards for air pollution because prevailing west-to-east winds push pollutants from the rest of the East Coast and Midwest into the state. Even if Maine is able to control emissions within its borders, pollution from as far away as Chicago still affects the state’s air quality and leads to more instances of asthma and other health conditions, said Tom Downs, the chief meteorologist at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

“We can’t stop the Midwest from burning coal,” Rep. Chellie Pingree (D) said. “But we’re the ones who kind of have to pay for it in the health of our people and the public health of our state. So we need the federal government to set those high standards.”

While emissions from coal plants in the Northeast and Midwest have decreased in recent years, pollution from cars and trucks, especially on the Interstate-95 corridor, accounts for much of the pollution that ends up in Maine. The interstate runs through or near Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. It’s common in the summer for winds to blow pollution from those areas to Maine, Downs said.

Even current cost-benefit analyses tend to underrate the health effects correlated with different pollution standards because — compared to the monetary impact to polluters of complying with tougher standards — they’re difficult to monetize, said Ivan Fernandez, a professor at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute.

“If you roll back a regulation so that the oil company can make a little more money, that extra money is not going to come to the person who’s got to take their child to the allergist because they’re having more problems breathing,” Fernandez said. “That’s the kind of price that’s paid.”

Pingree said it was “just cruel” the administration would target clean air standards during a respiratory disease pandemic that has been shown to have greater effects on people who are exposed to air pollution.

The EPA has said the proposal only changes the analysis of air pollution and makes the standards more consistent.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who was a coal industry lobbyist before joining the administration, said the proposal would correct an imbalance from Obama-era standards that Republican policymakers have long said exaggerated the harm carbon emissions cause. 

An EPA spokeswoman said in an email Thursday the proposal only applies to future rulemaking and does not change current regulations.

Permitting order

Separately, the June 4 executive order told federal departments to use the emergency provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and Clean Air Act to skip environmental reviews in order to speed approval for highways and other infrastructure projects.

The White House framed the move as a boost to the country’s economy, but some in Maine worry the order could inflict long-term harm to the state’s tourism and outdoor recreation sectors.

“The whole point is that there are harms that can’t be undone,” said Sue Ely, an advocate and staff attorney with the Natural Resources Council of Maine. “So this whole concept of throwing all these regulations out the window and just saying, ‘Permit as fast as you can’ is so reckless and so harmful, especially for a state like Maine that has tried so hard to protect our resources for future generations and for our economy and for the health of our people.”

Pingree signed a letter, along with more than 80 House Democrats, asking Trump to withdraw the order.

Pingree, who is a vice chair on the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls EPA funding, said House spending bills this year may block implementation of the changes. The panel could also seek to delay implementation in hopes that a Joe Biden win in the presidential election would cause the executive branch to overturn it.

Pingree said she couldn’t think of a specific project she was worried would be approved as a result of the order, but that she opposed the weakening of environmental permitting in general.

Daly’s group is concerned the order would mean easy approval of a proposed 145-mile Central Maine Power transmission line from the Quebec border to Lewiston. The group says the line’s path through the dense forests in the northern part of the state would affect natural habitats and could hurt the potential for the state to develop more renewable energy sources.

Ted Varipatis, a spokesman for the project, wrote in an email, “To the best of our knowledge, the Trump administration’s recent executive order on infrastructure development has not impacted the project.”

But the project still requires Army Corps of Engineers approval and the order directs the Corps to use its emergency permitting provisions to speed approval of all projects under its purview.

(Top photo: Mosquito Mount and Lake Moxie. Corridor lines will run along the lake visible from the lake and surrounding mountains. | courtesy of Moxie Outdoor Adventures)