Arizona Representative Jeff Flake has introduced the Commonsense Legislative Exceptional Events Reform – or CLEER – Act. Flake says exceeding Clean Air Act standards can have costly regulatory consequences even when caused by so-called exceptional events like a dust storm that rolled through parts of Arizona last summer. According to Flake – farmers and ranchers in arid parts of the nation are already forced to spend too much money mitigating dust. He says asking them to pay more to get rid of dust caused by natural phenomena completely outside their control is unacceptable. Flake says the EPA has a complex process to exempt the spikes caused by exceptional events from air quality data and the process by which states submit events for review is complicated, unpredictable, long and expensive. Even the EPA has admitted the process is broken.
Currently – Flake says there is no timeline for the EPA to review requests to exclude an exceptional event – which come in the form of costly demonstrations submitted by states for the agency’s review. The CLEER Act would require a 90 day review period. If the EPA hasn’t taken action – the demonstration under consideration would be considered approved. Among other things – the legislation also would require the EPA to provide specific and publicly-disclosed criteria that exceptional events demonstrations will be evaluated on.
Flake says the bottom line is that states, farmers and ranchers shouldn’t face bureaucratic penalties from the EPA for naturally occurring events. He says the CLEER Act will make the process for exemption clearer, faster and less costly.