The Environment Protection Agency has repealed its "endangerment finding" for several greenhouse gases. In our weekly series with the Bay Journal Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with reporter Jeremy Cox about the potential impact on cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.
RUSH: The Trump administration has issued regulations that would repeal what is called an "endangerment finding" that was aimed at curbing greenhouse gases. This is Don Rush. The repeal would eliminate the legal basis for the federal climate policy that includes regulating vehicles and power plants. In a weekly series with the Bay Journal, we talk with reporter Jeremy Cox, about the impact on the efforts to clean up the bay.
COX: The engagement finding was an Obama-era regulation that sought to create the legal underpinning to allow the government to set standards for greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide. Through the Clean Air Act, the EPA regulates many different chemicals, but it didn't quite reach far enough in the eyes of many to regulate the gases that are contributing to climate change. And so after the Supreme Court paved the way and agreed that [in] 2007 that the government could reach out and regulate these types of contaminants, they did so, and now the Trump administration has rolled that back.
RUSH: So specifically for the bay, is this expected to have some specific impact?
COX: This is a hidden effect as well, because one of the contaminants is something called nitrogen oxide. And nitrogen is part of that...nitrogen is a nutrient that degrade water quality and useless as air emission. How is this helping with the water? Well, the principle - very complicated here - is that what goes up must come down. So you have rainfall, you have gravity, wind, and all that sort of thing [which] carries nitrogen oxide through the air, and in the form of nitrogen in the water, it causes these algae blooms and oxygen losses in the water. So actually, one of the success stories of the bay cleanup has been these air pollution reductions dating back to the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, really. So we've even been predating this endangerment on regulation. So sort of a, I wouldn't say happy accident, but certainly one of the lesser known effects of clean air that you get. You tend to get clean water on the other side.
RUSH: So I understand that the Maryland part of environment that they're now perhaps looking at other strategies, other regulations, what can they be looking at?
COX: So like California and some other states, Maryland is thinking about, okay, well if the federal government is going to step out of regulating greenhouse gases, why can't we step into it? And so looking into the crystal ball here, it's likely that at least one of these states will attempt to do that. The EPA under Trump has already said that's not going to fly. And you can expect a legal challenge to that. But the argument is that if the federal government doesn't regulate, then taking away the endangerment finding actually gives states the freer hand to step into this space and enact tougher regulations. So coming to a Supreme Court near you...
RUSH: Keith Eshleman, he's with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences, Appalachian Lab. He's less certain that all this is going to have an impact in terms of cleanup.
COX: Cleanup has come so far in terms of air emissions reductions, and this had to do with federal laws passed to clean up power plants and vehicles, especially those laws are now endangered. But when it comes to the amount of nitrogen that's left to be reduced, there's really not a lot more progress to be made there.
RUSH: A general reporter, Jeremy Cox, on repeal of a finding that was the legal basis for regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse gases. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM, this is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
