TIA joins others in opposing new ozone standards

LSRUNQI

TIA joins others in opposing new ozone standards
Friday, August 19, 2011

Bowie, MD - The Tire Industry Association (TIA) announced that it, along with more than 170 businesses and business groups that together employ millions of American workers, have sent a letter to President Obama urging him to stop the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) voluntary reconsideration of new National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ground-level ozone. Howard Feldman, American Petroleum Institute director of regulatory and scientific policy, cited a study by Manufacturing Alliance/MAPI showing that 7.3 million jobs could be lost by 2020 if the EPA moves forward with a strict, new ozone standard. He also cited a recent study by NERA Economic Consulting that concluded, “Not one of EPA’s estimates of the benefits of reducing ozone to a tighter alternative ozone standard is as large as the costs of attaining that respective ozone standard.” TIA Executive Vice President Roy Littlefield said, “Now is not the time to saddle our economy with the extraordinary costs associated with the EPA’s proposed national ozone standard . . .,” and he asked President Obama to “ . . . delay this discretionary, out-of-cycle ozone standard, and wait until 2013 before determining whether a new standard is needed.” Littlefield went on to say, “U.S. businesses united in the opposition to the new EPA standard understand that this measure could have significant repercussions in the job market and could put a halt to operations aimed at finding alternative energy solutions. The new standard could have a significant impact on not only businesses, but the American public as a whole. TIA continues to work on the issue and hopes that President Obama will see that the last thing America needs at this juncture is anything that could cause more harm to the already fragile job situation. “The president has a chance to show he’s serious about his stated goal of improving regulations and creating jobs,” said Feldman. “Air quality has, and continues to improve under existing ozone standards – there’s no need to move the goalposts now in the middle of game. Changing the standards now would put nearly the entire country into non-compliance and force millions more Americans out of work, but it wouldn’t make us any healthier.”