UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

PUBLIC HEARING

PROPOSED RULE TO IMPLEMENT THE 8-HOUR

OZONE NATIONAL AMBIENT AIR QUALITY STANDARD

HOLIDAY INN SELECT

480 KING STREET

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 2003

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

A hearing was held in the above-entitled matter at the Holiday Inn Select, 480 King Street, Alexandria, Virginia, in the Carlyle 1 Meeting Room, before Thomas Helms, John Silvasi and Jan Tierney, the Panel, taken by Maureen S. Bennie, Court Reporter, beginning at 8:33 a.m., and proceeded as follows:

C O N T E N T S

DESCRIPTION	PAGE

Opening comments by Thomas Helms	6

Testimony of Ann Weeks	13

Testimony of Norman Fickthorn	20

Testimony of Stephen Harper	25, 31

Testimony of Everett (Brownie) Carson	26

Testimony of Erica Frank	33

Testimony of Scott Gollwitzer	36

Testimony of Michael Meyer	38

Testimony of Anthony Dorsey	40

Testimony of Illai Kenney	41

Testimony of Michael Replogle	44

Testimony of Jane Bright	51

Testimony of John Wilson	55

Testimony of Arthur Stamoulis	65

Testimony of John Kearney	69

Testimony of Stephanie Sanchez	74

Testimony of Phil Compton	81

Testimony of Charles Kleekamp	84

Testimony of Kathryn Kleekamp	88

Testimony of Frank O'Donnell	93

Testimony of James Brooks	96

CONTENTS (CONTINUED)

DESCRIPTION	PAGE

Testimony of Melissa Ladd	102

Testimony of Christopher Recchia	105

Testimony of A. Blakeman Early	111

Testimony of Katy Hubener	118

Testimony of Mark Mitchell	123

Testimony of Colleen Kiernan	128

Testimony of Jill Stephens	131

Testimony of Valerie True	135

Testimony of John Stanton	139

Testimony of Andy Bauer	145

Testimony of Joanna Schnurman	149

Testimony of Zachary Corrigan	152

Testimony of Jennifer Hicks	161

Testimony of Pamela Irwin	165

Testimony of Roger Diedrich	167

Testimony of Jason Babbie	170

Testimony of Nathaniel Mund	175

Testimony of Stephen Smith	180

Testimony of Ulla Reeves	186

Testimony of Ronald Bert	190

Testimony of Brooke Suter	191

CONTENTS (continued)

DESCRIPTION	PAGE

Testimony of Amy Beck	195

Testimony of Lee Epstein	196

Testimony of Melissa Bernardin	201

Testimony of Julie Crenshaw	206

Testimony of Robert Dalton	211

Testimony of Heather Quinlan	229

Testimony of Robert Sliwinski	233

Testimony of Dan Grace	238

Testimony of Bahri Aliriza	241

Testimony of James Lowenstern	247

Testimony of Frederick Newell	248

P R O C E E D I N G S

MR. HELMS: Welcome. We appreciate all of you coming out, those that are here and those that will be here at a later time. Welcome to the United States Environmental Protection Agency's public hearing on a rule to implement the new 8-hour ozone ambient air quality standard.

My name is Tom Helms. I am an engineer with EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards. I serve as a group leader for the Ozone Policies and Strategies Group within that office. I will be your hearing officer for today.

I am joined here by John Silvasi, an engineer in our ozone program, the principal author of the rule that we are talking about today and soliciting comments on. Jan Tierney from our Office of General Counsel will also serve on the hearing panel. And Natalie Garrison over there, one of our staff, will be taking notes. She will be sitting up here to look you in the eye as she writes notes. Denise Gerth -- I don't see Denise now -- she is our coauthor with John on this rule. She will be floating in and out. What I tell people, if you need details or you want to know where things are, Denise Gerth of our staff is here and she can line you up, point you in the right location on our website.

We are here to hear your comments on our proposed 8-hour rule. I want to remind you this public comment period is for our 8-hour rule. It is not to receive comments on the ozone nonattainment designation process that is underway right now and will culminate next April of 2004, with EPA promulgating ozone nonattainment designations.

Let's take a walk back and look at some history. How did we get here today? EPA promulgated this ozone

8-hour national ambient air quality standard back in July of 1997. Then all the lawyers came out, litigation ensued, and we had numerous court cases, very complex decisions, if you will. The reason we are proposing this 8-hour rule today is because the courts told us that our approach for implementing this new 8-hour standard by way of a state implementation process was not legal, that we had to make some changes. So this rule attempts to make those changes.

Since the Supreme Court ruling, we have had numerous interactions with interested parties. We had three public meetings -- one in Washington, another in Phoenix, for example -- to get input on the direction that you think we should go in developing this rule. As a result, we proposed the rule. It was signed by the Administrator on May 14th of this year and published in the Federal Register on June 2nd.

In this rule, we are obviously attempting to comply with the court mandates. We want to come up with a rule that provides maximum flexibility to states and local agencies as they develop their plans to meet this 8-hour ozone standard. We want to maintain progress with the ongoing 1-hour ozone ambient air quality program. And then finally, we hope the rule will provide for

anti-backsliding; in other words, maintain the progress that you have underway -- states have underway and local agencies have underway to meet the 1-hour standard.

Let's talk about time frame for a minute. Where are we going and when will we get there? The proposal was out June 2nd. We will take your comments today. The record will remain open until August 1st of this year. So if you are here today, you comment and then think of other items you wish you had said, you have the opportunity to provide them to us until August 1st of this year.

We hope to finalize this rule. Our target date for finalizing it will be December of this year. Then, if our nonattainment designation program goes as planned, designations are made on time -- and we intend to make them on time -- state and tribal implementation plans, the so-called SIPs from states, will be due April of 2007. Clean air attainment dates to meet this 8-hour standard would range from 2007 to 2021, depending on, number one, the options chosen and the severity of the air quality problem.

Again, all of you here today are welcome to comment. We encourage you to comment. We thank you for coming out today and showing your interest in this important rule.

A transcript of the hearing will be maintained. We have a court reporter right now that is recording verbatim what is going on. We hope that transcript will be available in approximately 30 days. And, John, that would be on the website, would it not?

MR. SILVASI: We will put it on a docket and would like to put it on the website too. But the docket is -- we have an electronic docket system that is on a website at EPA, an electronic docket system.

MR. HELMS: Okay. So if you are interested, and hopefully you will be, a transcript of this and the other two hearings that we had -- we had one in Dallas last week and one in San Francisco last week -- those transcripts will be available to you.

We have a contractor, E.H. Pechan and Associates, helping us. Is Barbara Bauer in here?

(Ms. Bauer indicating.)

MR. HELMS: Barbara is here to help us if you have questions if you can't -- Denise raise your hand. Denise Gerth again. Denise, who is on my staff, or Barbara, our contractor, will be willing to help you.

Let's talk about hearing ground rules. This is always fun, but it is absolutely necessary, I assure you. We welcome all of your comments. Anyone here is free to comment. We ask that you register outside to make a comment. If you are sitting out here and if you suddenly feel the urge to make a comment, raise your hand, get into the system, and you can comment. You can register afterward, but it is better to register before you come up here because they will be handing me these little yellow slips of paper and I will be processing them in order.

Each speaker will be called to this stand right here (indicating) to make your testimony. We ask that -- for the record, we ask you to give your name, your affiliation, your address, e-mail address if you have it, so the court reporter can place it into the system and we can follow up with you later on if necessary.

Because of the number of speakers we have planned today -- we have approximately 50 people that have pre- registered to speak -- we will ask that you limit your testimony, your oral testimony, to no longer than five minutes. At the four-minute mark, Denise Gerth will give you a one minute sign. We ask that you observe that sign. At one of our hearings we couldn't get an individual off. There is nothing wrong with that, except it is totally unfair to the other 48 or 47 people that would like to give testimony and have fixed time frames.

If you are not through in five minutes, that is okay. We will recess your testimony and, after everyone has their fair time going through the system, we will make available the mic again for you to continue on and we will ask the reporter to group the testimony together so it looks as if you gave it all at once.

Please observe that, though, because it is an adventure to try to, with style and grace, ask someone to yield to the next person who has been diligently waiting to get up there.

We on the Panel will ask clarifying questions. We are not here to answer detailed questions, we are here to get your comments on our proposed rule. If, in fact, after the hearing recesses and you want to ask Jan or John or Denise, Natalie or me a question, we will certainly do the best we can to answer it. But our purpose is to hear from you today.

And again, I want to remind you this is not -- this hearing is not for the purpose of commenting on

nonattainment designations. That program is running parallel to this, and there will be ample time to comment on those.

Are there any questions before we start?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Seeing none, we will begin. Denise, John, do we have a list right here? All right.

Again, when you come up, remember to identify yourself with all the details. If you have a copy of your testimony, please give it to our court reporter. It will greatly enhance her ability to get word for word what you want her to record.

Our first speaker is Ann Weeks. Ann, come forward.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Could I ask that you announce the next speakers that will be speaking so that we will know who is after Ann?

MR. HELMS: To the extent that I can, I will.

(Whereupon, there was a brief discussion off the record.)

MR. HELMS: The reason we are looking back and forth at each other, we have had a number of people sign up and we want to give priority at first to those people, except some of them aren't here. So we will do our very best to tell you who is next. And on the list is Scott Gollwitzer.

And I must admit to you I am a North Carolinian, so I am going to butcher your name. So smile and, with style and grace, correct me as I pronounce it.

So Scott would be the next individual, and then Lenny Kohm would be the next individual.

Ann Weeks, the podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF ANN WEEKS

MS. WEEKS: Good morning. And I get to go first, so I am going to try all this technology out. So bear with me.

My name is Ann Weeks. I am the litigation counsel to the Clean Air Task Force. We are in Boston, Massachusetts at 77 Summer Street. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and present our views on the proposal. The Clean Air Task Force is a not-for-profit environmental organization providing legal assistance and technical expertise to other nonprofits around the country.

EPA's stated purpose in issuing this proposal is to finally put in place the requirements for meeting the 1997 8- hour ozone standard, which the Agency and the courts have recognized is essential to protect the public health. With this proposal, however, EPA seems to be deliberately avoiding more stringent requirements Congress specifically added to the Clean Air Act to Subpart 2 to deal with nagging and seemingly intractable ozone problems. The Agency instead seems to be universally favoring more flexibility, longer timelines to attain and new and vaguely defined offramps for nonattainment areas from the process of actually getting to attainment and getting there quickly.

Now, I say the Agency seems to be because, frankly, there is not really any way of telling from this Federal Register notice exactly what EPA is going to require of nonattainment areas. Indeed, EPA has not yet modeled the health impacts of this proposal, and that is precisely because the proposal is not yet well defined enough to model. The emperor has no clothes.

We are all here. We are participating in a public hearing, trying to predict what the outcome of the proposal will be when EPA has not yet put forward a framework to analyze. Let's be clear. The proposal consists of 68 triple- columned Federal Register pages describing a complicated collection of mix-and-match options, but EPA hasn't yet provided us with a proposed rule text. This is highly irregular.

Like the courtiers in the famous Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, we are being asked to note on and evaluate, define, weave and pattern in the cloth, even though there is no actual cloth on the loom yet. I only have five minutes. I am not going to digress into the fairy tale, and I am not going to comment on specific details about cloth I can't see.

We are told that EPA does plan to make the rule available to us in the coming weeks during the comment period while it is still open. I am very much looking forward to that. So today I would like to provide some thoughts about what we will be looking to see in the proposed rule language when EPA finally makes it available to us.

First, EPA, please do not return us to a world of endlessly extendable deadlines for reaching attainment and insufficient control measures in new 8-hour

nonattainment areas. The EPA proposal seems to put this scheme forward as its preference when it suggests that all areas designated ozone nonattainment for the first time in 2004 will be governed by the less rigorous requirements of Subpart 1 of the Act. We believe it would be a mistake to cavalierly throw away the greater structure and rigors of Part 2.

Second, we view with real concern the method that EPA proposes to use in moving from the 1-hour standard to the 8-hour standard. The proposed rule language when it is released to us ought to include provisions providing that areas that are currently not attaining the 1-hour standard -- such as the one in which we are sitting -- will, in fact, be required to attain it and to continue with measures designed to achieve that goal until it is attained, at the very least.

It is true that the 8-hour standard responds to the need for protection from longer-term exposures to lower levels of ozone, but exposure to high levels of ozone over shorter periods remains a health problem. Measures that have been put in place to guard against such events should not simply disappear when the new standard is implemented. Public health requires protections from both kinds of exposure.

Third, we ask EPA to eliminate the incentive feature from its Subpart 2 classification system for the dirtiest areas. The preamble suggests that an area that is both violating the 1-hour standard and the 8-hour standard could get a lower 8-hour classification rating, and therefore be required to do less to combat ozone smog on the basis only of computer modeling, showing the area will attain the 8-hour standard and in a shorter period of time.

We are concerned about the gaming that might be associated with this kind of modeling. Indeed, the preamble does not provide any detail about what modeling would be acceptable for this purpose. Moreover, we are concerned about what happens when the area doesn't achieve the standard in the time that it is modeled to achieve. What happens then? More delay.

Finally, we note that the Bush Administration's policy choices to provide additional flexibility, allow backsliding, promote offramps from the more stringent provisions of Subpart 2 of the Act seem very strongly driven by an assumption that the Clear Skies Initiative powerplant legislation will become law. But Clear Skies is not law, nor are any of the several other stronger, more health protective, competing legislative proposals yet law.

Congress has not made that choice yet, and the Agency must not assume it has or will make that choice. This is just one more instance in which the emperor's outfit is significantly lacking. But, more seriously, it is an exceedingly bad way to make important policy choices that will impact the health of children, seniors and other vulnerable people in society.

Thank you again for the opportunity to share the Clean Air Task Force views on the preamble. We also plan to file detailed comments on the August 1st deadline.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you, Ms. Weeks.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Okay. Thank you.

MS. WEEKS: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Ann Weeks was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Is Scott Gollwitzer present?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Lenny Kohm?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Matthew Wasson?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Michael Meyer?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Norm Fickthorn?

MR. FICKTHORN: Yes, sir.

MR. HELMS: Norm, come forward. The podium is yours.

MR. FICKTHORN: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Who would be next to go? Who is next after Norm that is here?

MR. HELMS: That will be an adventure. I am not going to be able to help you with that. Please don't ask again.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Okay.

MR. HELMS: I am going down the list as people sign up. I can tell you who is on the next line, but that doesn't seem to help very much.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: A lot of people are checked in and ready to go.

MR. HELMS: We are going to run through the list as people sign up as best we can. That is the way we are going to run here.

The next one is Pauline Kaltsunis, and the next is Katy Hubener. The next is Steve Harper. Steve is here, I know.

Okay.

TESTIMONY OF NORMAN FICKTHORN

MR. FICKTHORN: Good morning. My name is Norman Fickthorn. I appreciate the opportunity today to present the statement of the Utility Air Regulatory Group, or UARG, on EPA's proposed rule to implement the 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standards.

The proposed rule seeks to comply with applicable Clean Air Act requirements, including the provisions of Subpart 2 of Part B of Title I of the Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Whitman versus American Trucking Associations. At the same time, the proposed rule seeks to provide states, local governments and regulated parties with flexibility in meeting the Act's requirements. UARG supports EPA's apparent goal of balancing adherence to statutory requirements with an appropriate degree of flexibility, where allowed by the statute and where consistent with sound public policy.

UARG recognizes, however, that some parties, particularly environmental organizations, already have raised questions about the consistency of parts of the proposed rule with Subpart 2, and that implementation rules that deviate from statutory mandates may trigger renewed litigation. Such litigation may, in turn, affect the schedule for implementing the 8-hour standard. UARG expects to address these and related issues in written comments later in this rulemaking.

Regarding the implementation schedule, UARG is encouraged that EPA in the proposed rule recognizes the importance of completing the present rulemaking before designating 8-hour ozone nonattainment areas. The summary section of EPA's proposal states that the intended effect of the rule is to provide certainty to states regarding their planning obligations, such that states may begin SIP development upon designation and classification for the

8-hour standard.

As EPA recognizes, however, it also must provide adequate opportunity for comment on proposed regulatory text, which EPA says it will draft and publish after receiving and considering comments on the present proposal. It now appears that, given delays in issuance of this proposal and the need for a public comment period on regulatory text, EPA may be unable to complete this rulemaking by December 2003.

As suggested by the District Court consent decree on the designation schedule and Assistant Administrator Holmstead's February 27, 2003 memorandum, the current April 15, 2004 date for designating

nonattainment areas is predicated on EPA completing this implementation rulemaking by the end of this year. In addition, the Holmstead memorandum promises states a period of at least a month after EPA issues the final rule for them to revise their recommended designations in light of that rule, that implementation rule, and UARG believes it is critically important that EPA allow states to do so.

Thus, UARG believes EPA should be prepared to ask the Court to defer the designation date. UARG also urges the Agency to complete any future ambient standard implementation rulemakings before requiring states to submit recommended designations so that states have full knowledge of all implementation requirements and an opportunity to factor those requirements into their designation determination processes.

UARG appreciates the opportunity to provide this statement and looks forward to submitting full written comments on the proposed rule. Thank you.

MR. HELMS: I have one question I would like you to clarify, if you would. You mentioned in your statement here that you urge EPA to complete any future ambient standard implementation rulemakings. What do you mean by that, any future?

MR. FICKTHORN: It is simply a reference to EPA's general policy with respect to rules that govern implementation of any future ambient air quality standards, not necessarily ozone only, but other standards as well, such as, for example, particulate matter.

MR. HELMS: Are you asking us before we move forward with the ozone rule to come out with a PM rule?

MR. FICKTHORN: No, I don't mean to suggest that at all. I mean that with respect to implementation of any given standard, we urge EPA to complete the rulemaking governing implementation of that standard before going forward with the designation process, so that states and all other parties have full knowledge of what the implementation requirements are before getting to the point of having to determine what areas should be designated nonattainment.

MR. HELMS: Thank you. That clarification helps.

MR. FICKTHORN: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Norman Fickthorn was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: We have gone to plan B in the designation process. In the interest of being efficient and trying not to frustrate some of the speakers that have come here ready to roll, we are using this magic yellow pencil to mark you as you come in and indicate that you want to talk. If we overlook you, we will get you, though.

The next speaker would be Steve Harper, followed by Brownie Carson.

The podium is yours, Steve.

MR. HARPER: Thanks, Tom.

TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN HARPER

MR. HARPER: My name is Steve Harper. I am the corporate environmental health safety and energy policy director for Intel, 1634 Eye Street, D.C., and I am here representing the Electronics Industry Alliance Clean Air Working Group, which I chair. My comments will supplement comments made at the previous hearings by representatives of EIA from A&D and Texas Instruments.

We appreciate this opportunity to provide comments on the proposed rule to implement the 8-hour standard. A copy has been presented, and we intend to provide more detailed comments to the written docket on the rule. What I want to address here today are a couple of options that EPA has identified and present a third proposal or a third alternative that we think better accords with the Supreme Court decision.

Let me state at the outset that we understand the difficulty that EPA faces in trying to square the decision -- we believe that EPA should implement this rule primarily under Subpart 1, and take steps only as permitted under the statute to preserve the textually applicable provisions of Subpart 2, and we think that what has been proposed in option 1 and option 2 fail both tests. We think option 1 is gives the Agency the ability to -- may I just recess?

MR. HELMS: Sure. We are going to use the hearing officer's discretion to delete everything that Steve said at this point. I don't think he is feeling good. We will call him back at a later date.

So all of you out there pretend Steve wasn't even up here. Okay? He will start just as soon as he feels better.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Stephen Harper was adjourned.)

MR. HELMS: Brownie Carson, would you come forward? The floor is yours. We will follow Mr. Carson with Erica Frank.

TESTIMONY OF EVERETT (BROWNIE) CARSON

MR. CARSON: Good morning, members of the Panel. My name is Brownie Carson, Everett Carson, formally, for the record. I am the executive director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine. We are located in Augusta, our state capitol, and I am here representing roughly 7,000 members of the Natural Resources Council who are interested in clean air for our state.

I am not a clean air expert, but today, based upon conversations with my staff and others, I am urging you to scrap your proposed rule preamble by drafting something that is much more aggressive. It needs to do two fundamental things. It needs to hold the polluters and states to earlier compliance deadlines, and it would need to require all powerplants to fully clean up to modern day pollution limits and comply with new source review standards.

We have got a number of problems in Maine. We need you to take steps that bring to us, as the end of the tailpipe state in the nation, cleaner air that reduces the impact of dirty air creating asthma attacks and impairing the lungs of nearly one-third of Maine's population -- those roughly 400,000 Mainers who are asthmatic are children, are elderly, or who have lung or heart ailments -- and secondly to reduce the haze and the poor visibility that clouds our coastal areas from Kittery to Blue Hill, Acadia National Park and the maritimes.

Just this past week, an EPA staffer briefed an audience in Maine on the EPA's proposed implementation standard, and he said -- and I quote: Maine has not had much progress since 1990 in reducing 8-hour exceedences. Maine is probably going to be out of attainment for a long time. That is purely and simply unacceptable to us.

Yesterday, the first day of our ozone season, Kennebunkport, the summer home of the Bush family, had a ground-level ozone reading of .93. Acadia had an alert day at .88. Last summer -- and I am not sure how many of you have been to Maine, and if you have been to Maine when we have bad air -- we, unfortunately, have it -- we had 17 days of unhealthful air quality. The highest reading was again at the corner of the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, where the reading reached .121. Acadia National Park, one of the gems in our National Park System, had six days with readings over .10.

If I sound like I have a little edge in my voice this morning, you can understand that. This is really, really unacceptable. I would like to make three points, and I am going to try to stay within my five minutes.

First, EPA must understand the science of air pollution transport as it affects Maine. Now, I have every reason to believe that you do, and so it mystifies us that you are not being harder and firmer with deadlines and that you are not being more aggressive with the new source review program. It is scientifically impossible for Maine to come into compliance at any date unless upwind air pollution is stopped. Maine has bad air days that are directly linked to high energy use days when upwind dirty powerplants are running at their fullest and dirtiest capacities. The science is painfully and dangerously clear when our winds come from the southwest, as they typically do during the ozone season. They bring a hefty dose of NOx and VOCs and other dangerous pollution to down east Maine. We must clean up all upwind air sources, especially the dirty powerplants, in order for Maine to achieve compliance with the 8-hour ozone standard.

Second, EPA should not allow upwind polluters any more time to comply with requirements when they are already overdue and complying with it. It is fundamentally unfair that upwind states will be given another seven to eighteen years -- and this rule, I agree, is so vague that it is very hard to tell what it will actually do, but we cannot afford these long extended deadlines. It is simply going to have too great an impact on the people of Maine.

Third, EPA should not let any powerplant off the hook from meeting the new source review requirements. In June 2001, Maine took a strong leadership stand, requiring full on- site cleanup of NOx from our only grandfather powerplant, the Wyman station on Cousins Island in Casco Bay. We have attempted to do our part to clean up our polluting powerplant at home and, in fairness, we would like to see you take aggressive action to force other powerplants and other sources to do the same on an aggressive schedule.

In conclusion, time is of the essence. According to the Maine DEP, last summer was man's worst ozone season in a decade. I mentioned the readings we had the day before yesterday. I don't know what they were yesterday. I am sure they were likely higher. My message to you is please do an aggressive plan, please deliver clean air to the people of Maine and New England, and please do it promptly.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you. Hold on just a second.

Questions from the Panel?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you for taking the time to come down.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Everett Carson was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: We will again exercise the prerogative of the chair. We will re-call Steve Harper. Steve indicates he is feeling better now.

(Whereupon, there was a brief discussion off the record.)

TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN HARPER (resumed)

MR. HARPER: I will not repeat what I said in the beginning, except to say that I am here representing the Electronics Industry Alliance. We testified at the other two hearings. Basically our position today is that EPA's two options that they have laid out, the two main options they have laid out in the proposal, are both deficient, we think, on legal as well as policy grounds.

I will talk a little bit about why we believe that. We have offered a third alternative that we think better squares with the decision, which we understand is very difficult to square. It is a very confusing decision. We also think the alternative approach that we lay out is better from a policy perspective.

The Whitman decision, we believe, was a difficult one, as I said. In the proposed rule, EPA, in our belief, adopts a narrow and, we think, improper reading of the Court's decision. We think that the primary holding in Whitman was that the simultaneous implementation approach originally proposed by the Agency was inconsistent with the Clean Air Act, because it wholly ignored elements of Subpart 2.

The Court's decision -- or statement, rather, that Subpart 2 unquestionably applies we think has been taken too literally and too broadly in EPA's proposal. In particular, we think the proposed rule would, under option 1, but also to some extent under option 2, rewrite the statute, which is impermissible, by substituting design values in Subpart 2 and in effect rewriting it.

So what we have offered in terms of an option 3 is a slightly different approach, which we think does preserve what we think are the textually applicable provisions of Subpart 2, and that's what the Court called for. Rather than going into detail into option 3, we have laid it out in our written testimony. We have presented this to you in the past. I would be glad to take any questions. We will be submitting further written testimony.

MR. HELMS: Thank you, Steve.

Any questions for Mr. Harper?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Stephen Harper was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Erica Frank. Ms. Frank will be followed by Scott Gollwitzer. Is Scott here?

MR. GOLLWITZER: Yes, sir.

MR. HELMS: Okay. You will follow.

The floor is yours.

TESTIMONY OF ERICA FRANK

MS. FRANK: Thank you. I have copies of my testimony for all of you as well.

I am Erica Frank. I am the vice chair of Family and Preventive Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta and a physician who specializes in preventive medicine, and I speak as a board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, as a clinician concerned about my patients, and as a citizen who is concerned about my community. I speak also as a taxpayer who is concerned that weakening hard-won requirements for cleaner air is not a cost savings. It is merely a cost shifting.

Most air pollution, as you all well know, comes from point sources. It comes from individual coal-fired powerplants with insufficient, antiquated scrubber technology, owned by big companies that believe that this EPA will allow them to pollute even more so that they can increase their profits even more. It comes from cities that believe that this EPA will allow them to get off the hook yet again so that they don't have to invest in public transportation or other alternatives -- of course, I feel that very strongly, coming from Atlanta -- and air pollution comes, of course, from a thousand other smaller sources that would have to develop and implement cleaner alternatives if EPA said they had to.

Of course, all these sources will save some money if EPA backs off, but these costs don't disappear, they are merely shifted. And these shifted costs are simply too high, from my perspective, and I want to give you just one example from a medical perspective in Georgia of these shifted costs.

According to Abt Associates, a southern company which is based in Georgia, of course, where we had a red alert breathing day as I prepared to come here, we could achieve a 75 percent reduction in emissions using

off-the-shelf technology. And what would that reduction prevent each year? Hundreds of asthma ER visits in Georgia and even hundreds of deaths, thousands of bronchitis cases, tens of thousands of cases of respiratory symptoms, and hundreds of thousands of days of lost work due to illness.

Imagine the millions of dollars of medical and productivity costs that would be saved in Georgia alone by good implementation. As it is, these costs are borne unfairly, carried by unwilling victims of companies and cities that will continue to produce and tolerate at least as much pollution as EPA will allow. And of course, the financial costs are really only the beginning. The human costs of these diseases and deaths are enormous. And, most importantly, they are unnecessary.

We have the technology that we need for you to have this resolved. Please do not fail your constituents. Your real constituents are not the handful of individuals who will make more money if you relax standards. Your constituents are Americans who need and deserve to breathe clean air, my fragile patients, our vulnerable children and grandchildren, our aging parents and every one of us.

Please fulfill your responsibilities to those whom you have pledged to serve. Please be honorable and vigilant and maintain high standards for clean air.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much. Thank you for taking the time to come up from Atlanta.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Erica Frank was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Scott Gollwitzer. We will follow Scott with Michael Meyer.

The floor is yours.

TESTIMONY OF SCOTT GOLLWITZER

MR. GOLLWITZER: My name is Scott Gollwitzer. I am a citizen of North Carolina, and I have come up for this hearing to testify in front of the EPA about what I think of their rules.

As I was leaving to come up here on Wednesday from Asheville, North Carolina, we were enveloped in Code Orange skies across the state. We were experiencing similar problems, Code Oranges and Code Reds. These are problems, in our state particularly, as well as other states. North Carolinians recognized this problem last year by passing our Clean Smokestacks Act, which is going to clean up our coal- fired powerplants by 2009 and 2013, roughly a 70 percent reduction of SOx and NOx.

People are dying of being poisoned. That's why we enacted this law. That's why the citizens of North Carolina unanimously decided to invoke this law. Another purpose of the law was to help other states realize the benefits of cleaning up air pollution and helping North Carolina clean up its own. Yet today, the EPA is considering a proposal that is going to weaken ozone standards and weaken North Carolina's tremendous progress in cleaning up its own pollution.

I am not a clean air expert, but by reviewing this proposal to the extent it can be considered a proposal, I am led to believe that EPA is no more an expert on clean air than I am. North Carolinians expect and I expect, as a citizen of North Carolina and the United States, that EPA should immediately institute a program that directs immediate compliance with public health standards and implement, enforce and strengthen the new source review provisions of the Clean Air Act as soon as possible.

Thanks very much.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Any questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thanks for coming up.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Scott Gollwitzer was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Michael Meyer, and Michael will be followed by Illai Kenney.

The podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL MEYER

MR. MEYER: My name is Michael Meyer, and I am an interested citizen from the state of North Carolina. When I left Raleigh-Durham two days ago, it was Code Red. When I came to Washington, D.C., it was a Code Red. It was a Code Red yesterday, and today is a Code Orange.

I think this situation is awful. I come to my nation's capitol and I can't breathe the air. I can't go outside and see the beautiful sites and the beautiful buildings and all the history that is here, and I think that is such a shame. I also think it is a shame that EPA, in my opinion, is not doing enough to protect the air of citizens like myself.

I think North Carolina has gone a long way in passing the Clean Smokestacks Act. It is working towards cleaning up the air, but as a North Carolina citizen, I am not going to get the full benefits of this plan if other states are allowed to continue to allow high levels of air pollution and ozone emissions. Therefore, I think -- when I went over this rule -- and I am not an expert on ozone. I don't know much about air pollution. But I know that I am concerned about my own health and I am concerned about the health of my family and my neighbors.

This rule, the problem that I see with it is that it presents a couple of options. For me, this doesn't seem like it is a rule. It is awfully confusing for somebody like myself, just a simple citizen, to go through this and understand exactly what the EPA is proposing to do and what they will end up doing after this hearing, and I would like to see a stricter standard, more along the lines of option 1 but even more strict than that, and allow the public to have a hearing to comment specifically on actual rule language.

Please clean up the air and the rest of the country so that us North Carolinians can breathe clean air.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Any questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you for taking the time to come here to Washington.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Michael Meyer was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Ms. Kennedy, and you will be followed by Anthony Dorsey.

TESTIMONY OF ANTHONY DORSEY

MR. DORSEY: Good morning. My name is Anthony Dorsey. I am here today representing the Benjamin E. Mays National Educational Resource Center. I am from Forest Park, Georgia, and my community has extremely poor air quality due to pollution from the airport, diesel trucks and powerplants.

As more and more children suffer from asthma, it seems like EPA is dragging out the time when we will enforce a simple standard that will protect our health. It is vitally important to establish standards to get the job done. We learned this in school. When you delay and weaken standards, things may look better on the surface, but the truth is that you create a crisis.

Much like Maine, we are numerous with problems, some I am unaware of, but there is one that I am absolutely sure of, and that is poor air quality in my community and abroad. And instead of progressing to cleaner air, we seem to be digressing. This is unacceptable to youth near and far, so we urge EPA to act now for our community. Asthma has already reached crisis level. We ask that you clean up powerplants, maintain existing deadlines and, more aggressively, to clean up our air.

Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Anthony Dorsey was concluded.)

TESTIMONY OF ILLAI KENNEY

MS. KENNEY: My name is Illai Kenney. I am a youth leader with the Georgia Kids Against Pollution and coordinator for the 2004 One Child, One Voice, One Planet, One Vote campaign. My testimony today is focused on my friends, family and the communities I grew up in.

I was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, currently in nonattainment for 8-hour ozone and PM 2.5. I moved to Los Angeles, California, also in nonattainment. Then I moved to our nation's capitol, once again in nonattainment. I now live in Atlanta, Georgia and, as you might guess, in nonattainment for PM and ozone.

African-American children and youth are concentrated in large metropolitan areas, and we are impacted more by particulate matter and ozone. No one really knows exactly why we have more asthma, but everyone knows that poor air quality makes it worse. You may think that we don't understand the impact, that we don't know what we're talking about, but we have conducted ozone monitoring at our activities center, and day after day, the ozone levels were in the highest range.

I read that the EPA is trying to figure out how to implement the new ozone standards. Words like immediately, quickly and completely come to mind. The ozone standard is really a healthy air standard. There is no need to make dramatic statements when nonattainment says it all. The bottom line is that you will either act now to make things better or watch as more and more cities go into nonattainment.

I know that no one in this room will make the final decision, but if we all agree, then we will leave knowing that we are moving in the right direction. The big corporations can't do anything until you decide on the standard. When it comes to cleaning up, they are a lot like teenagers. Mostly, they will do only what they have to do and, if we don't watch them, they will do what they want to do.

Nobody owns the sky. No one has a right to pollute the air and then take their time cleaning up the mess. The sky is ours to enjoy, but we don't own it. When the air becomes unhealthy, it is time to act. For black youth in urban America, you are already late. EPA must have a plan to make sure the big companies do all that they can to clean up. No loopholes, no excuses, no time out. It is time for action, enforcement and movement in the direction of clean air now.

Thank you.

MR. SILVASI: I have a question. Could you describe a little bit the monitoring that you have done in Atlanta? You had mentioned that you had done some monitoring in Atlanta.

MS. KENNEY: Yes. We did the ozone monitoring. During the day, we picked, like, an hour for one of the Kids against Pollution to go out. You put the strip out facing -- actually, we take the wind, the temperature and everything, we write it down and then we see what the ozone levels were. Mostly every day the summer we did it, it was in the highest levels. There wasn't but three days out of the whole summer that weren't hot.

MR. SILVASI: And you have volunteers going out to different parts of the city and exposing --

MS. KENNEY: Yes. We work with SOC, and they have people in different areas of Atlanta doing things. So we did it in Forest Park and other people did it in other areas of Atlanta.

MR. SILVASI: Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you for taking the time to come here and testify.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Illai Kenney was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Michael Replogle, followed by Blake Early.

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL REPLOGLE

MR. REPLOGLE: Good morning. My name is Michael Replogle, and I serve as transportation director of Environmental Defense. I am based here in Washington, D.C., but I am testifying today on behalf of our 300,000 members.

We are alarmed by EPA's proposal for 8-hour ozone implementation. In the name of adopting a more stringent pollution standard, EPA is actually proposing to undermine Clean Air Act enforcement and harm the health of our children. EPA's proposed implementation plan for the 8-hour ozone standard, if adopted, would substantially weaken clean air protections by sharply curtailing the key implementation tools under the Clean Air Act that have been successful over the past decade in achieving significant progress towards meeting clean air standards.

EPA proposes to summarily revoke the old 1-hour standard and its associated designations and classifications a year after the effective date of the new 8-hour designations. This would undermine ongoing state planning processes in major metro areas that are designed to lower harmful ozone concentrations as part of efforts to achieve the 1-hour ozone standard. It is also unlawful.

I would like to focus today on the implications of this proposed rule on a key implementation tool for clean air transportation conformity, which ensures that transportation plans and programs don't delay the timely attainment of the national ambient air quality standards. The EPA implementation strategy proposes to render ineffective for many years transportation conformity programs in seriously polluted areas like Washington, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago and other places, making it more likely that those areas will again fail to achieve healthy air quality by the deadlines established under the Clean Air Act.

I would also like to give some personal context to my remarks by putting a spotlight on Deborah Kaufman (ph) of Southern California, who is on a crusade to keep other parents from suffering the horrible loss of a child due to asthma. It has been five years since her son Doug died at age 19 from a lung disease. Quote, I didn't know someone as healthy as my son could die of asthma, unquote, she says. Now I want to make sure everyone who will listen understands the severity of asthma, unquote.

In 1997, EPA revised the health standard for ozone to approve the protection of children like Doug and other vulnerable populations. It has long been known that ozone causes people who already have asthma and other lung diseases to sicken, to require more medication, to go to emergency rooms, get hospitalized and even die. But at least one credible recent study has suggested that exposure to high levels of ozone may cause people to get asthma.

A group of Southern California children who, like Deborah's son Doug, exercised outdoors a great deal and also lived in areas with high ozone, were found to have a greater risk of developing asthma in the first place, compared to children who didn't exercise as much but who lived in areas with less ozone.

It is clear that we have lost precious time in realizing the public health protection sought by EPA in 1997 because there has been little progress in implementing this new ozone standard here in Washington or other areas. This delay, together with the serious public health risks posed by ground-level ozone, make it imperative that EPA both expeditiously complete action on this proposal and adopt a rigorous protective implementation program that will safeguard the health of our most vulnerable citizens.

This past week alone, here in the Washington metro area, we experienced two of the six Code Red days for unhealthful air quality that are allowable in the entire 2003 to 2005 time period. It will be official once again that our metro area has failed to meet its Clean Air Act attainment deadline for the 1-hour ozone standard. Yet in its 8-hour ozone framework, EPA is proposing to sweep this failure under the carpet with no requirement for further bump up to ensure added emission reductions are in place and with no requirement that the region undertake additional emission reductions to ensure reasonable further progress towards attainment of the NAAQS. It will take considerable further emission reductions to attain the 8-hour ozone standard in regions like ours here, but EPA's proposed framework contemplates options to delay timely additional emission reductions, literally costing some children like Doug their very lives.

With transportation the source of a third to half of the health-threatening air pollutants in many areas, it is dangerous to dismantle or undermine the operation of transportation conformity, as the Administration proposes to do both through this 8-hour ozone implementation framework and through provisions in the Safe-T bill it recently submitted to Congress to reauthorize the federal transportation law, T21. It is also costly to Deborah and her family and the more than 135 million Americans who live in areas where EPA's data shows the air isn't always safe to breathe. Indeed, the Federal Highway Administration has estimated the adverse health impacts of motor vehicle pollution cost Americans over $40 billion a year, a hidden tax of over $600 per household.

Transportation conformity has been very effective behind the scenes, motivating actions to curb pollution and protect health. Conformity has spurred support for cleaner vehicles, fuels and maintenance and strategies to curb traffic and pollution growth with better travel choices. It has gotten transportation air quality agencies talking together. Disabling conformity and dismantling effective emission reduction strategies, as EPA's proposal would do, will undermine this progress.

In conclusion, the story today is simple. We have got a serious air quality problem that threatens our health. We have tools to fix that problem, but EPA is proposing today to blunt those tools, leading to more dirty air and harm or even death for once healthy kids like Doug. But we can win a happier ending to this story if EPA revises this proposed rule to, among other things, first ensure enforcement of the 1-hour ozone emission budgets until attainment and maintenance of the 1-hour standard has been fully demonstrated; two, ensure that attainment demonstrations are based on scientifically valid regional airshed modeling, rather than scientifically invalid weight of evidence and linear proportional rollback methods; three, ensure continuous effective operation of successful emission reduction strategies, including conformity and new source review in both existing 1-hour and new 8-hour ozone nonattainment areas with strong anti-backsliding provisions; and, four, enforce reasonable further progress requirements in nonattainment areas and mandatory additional emission reduction requirements when attainment deadlines or SIP milestones are missed.

In closing, I would like to mention that Environmental Defense has submitted other testimony on this proposed framework at the Austin hearing, and that we will be submitting extensive further written comments prior to August 1st.

Thank you again for your time.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Michael Replogle was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Next is Blake Early.

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: The yellow pen let me down, then. Blake is around somewhere. We will now move to Jane Bright, followed by John Wilson.

The podium is yours.

(Whereupon, there was a brief discussion off the record.)

TESTIMONY OF JANE BRIGHT

MS. BRIGHT: Thank you very much, and good morning. My name is Jane Bright, and I am with a group called HealthLink, which is an all volunteer citizens group in Massachusetts that formed in 1998, when we started getting concerned about the health effects of the Salem Harbor Generating Station, which is in our community. We live under a powerplant. And people have said what does that mean in terms of our health, and we started doing some research. We did the research, and it is worse than we thought, even. We know and you folks know about the respiratory problems, and since we started in 1998, further studies have shown that air pollution is even more problematic.

You may or may not be familiar with an American Lung Association study that was released in October of 2002 that just lists the air quality studies on health from mid 2001 to 2002 that talks about pollution being linked to lung cancer, heart attack, strokes, high blood pressure, congenital heart defects, asthma and even brain damage. One year's worth of studies, seventeen pages long. It is absolutely indisputable that pollution damages health.

Now, going back to my community, one of the things that we did was we got mad, because we didn't think it was right to be poisoned against our will. So we got together with other people across the state of Massachusetts and started working on getting things changed with powerplants. Republican Governor Paul Cellucci started the work, looking at what we could do to change this. In 2001, his successor, Republican Governor Jane Swift, signed the regulations, and this year, Republican Governor Nick Romney said yes, we are going to implement those standards as quickly as we can.

There is a reason why three Republican governors in a row have said yes, we are going to clean up these powerplants. It is because over 80 percent of the population demanded it. They said it is unfair for us to be poisoned against our will.

Now, when you said this morning you are looking at possibly going out to 2021, I was astounded. In our case, the regulations require that powerplants in Massachusetts clean up either by 2004 or 2006, depending upon the work that they are doing. Our plant is owned by PG&E, and they did all sorts of appeals and so forth, and they finally resolved the timeline because they wanted 2006 and we wanted 2004 and they just said okay, how about 2005. The community is happy to have it resolved, but they are appalled that they have to wait one more year. So when you say 2021, it is totally ridiculous. It is totally unacceptable. Let me put it to you this way:

Since September 11th, we have agonized as a country as to what we could have done to save those 3,000 lives. Nobody said well, gee, if we knew how to prevent it should we have. You folks are asking the question should we. You know how to clean up this pollution. You know what it is doing to the American public. The American public knows what it is doing to them. It is time to close the loopholes. It is time to make this happen immediately.

The DEP of Massachusetts has told me that, you know, we are already out of attainment. You heard Brownie Carson talk about Maine. Massachusetts is also out of attainment. We have just passed the toughest clean air regs in the nation. We are still going to be out of attainment because of what is happening upwind from us, and there is nothing we can do about it in state. It is up to you folks to protect the states that are affected by the other states, which is probably about 80 percent of the states in this country. We cannot do it alone. You folks have to do it. We have the technology to clean up a lot of these sources. It is simply a matter of will and doing what is right for the American public.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Comments or questions?

MR. SILVASI: Let me just ask one clarifying question. You mentioned the 2021 attainment date. Were you implying that you believe that that was the date for all areas?

MS. BRIGHT: No, but keep in mind that -- you know, I talk about Massachusetts, but I also have one son who lives in California and another son who is in Missouri. And I care about what happens around this country because I have family there, I travel there. So it is not acceptable for you to say well, gee, maybe we can do something in Massachusetts and let some of those other states suffer. 2021 should be unacceptable anywhere.

MR. SILVASI: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Jane Bright was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: John Wilson, followed by Arthur Stamoulis.

Hold on one second. I have to go outside for just a few minutes. I will turn over the chair to John Silvasi as hearing officer.

MR. SILVASI: Would you state your name and your affiliation for the court reporter, please?

TESTIMONY OF JOHN WILSON

MR. WILSON: Yes. Thank you. For the record, my name is John D. Wilson. I am the executive director of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention. I am here to comment primarily on one-half of one sentence in EPA's proposal to implement the 8-hour ozone standard and abandon the 1-hour ozone standard. In the words of EPA's proposal, we are also proposing that we would no longer make findings of failure to attain the 1-hour standard. If this proposal becomes effective, Houston will fail to attain the 1-hour standard, and the health of people in Houston will suffer.

What is the rationale for this proposal? According to EPA's proposal, quote, the deciding factor supporting the schedule for the revocation in our proposal is to ensure areas do not have to perform conformity analyses for both the 1-hour and 8-hour standards at the same time. Now, that is a public health argument if I have ever heard one. It is difficult for me, actually, to believe this statement. If and when Houston fails to meet the 1-hour health standard for ozone, the region should be subject to the federal sanctions as established by Congress and signed by then President Bush in 1990. A bureaucratic repeal that subverts our clean air laws on this point can be described as backsliding, a rollback, or simply a giveaway to polluters at the expense of public health.

EPA to me appears to have settled on revoking the 1-hour standard prior to 2007 for the very purpose of subverting the clear intent of the law. There is no doubt that the threat of sanctions is an effective strategy in motivating recalcitrant officials in Texas to finally take action.

Here is the proof, in the words of my public officials: First, Texas state Senator Chris Harris, quote, if we don't address this problem, this will shut the state of Texas down. That is what makes this bill so important. If we don't get this bill passed, this can do horrendous economic damage to the whole state, unquote. These comments were made several months ago. Senator Harris was explaining to the Houston Chronicle that if the Texas legislature fails to fund its emissions reduction plan, Texas would lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal highway money and relinquish control of the cleanup plan to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Next I will quote Bruce LaBoon, former chairman of the Greater Houston Partnership. And in Houston, that is nonprofit organization that is private. He is actually a public official, because they kind of run things down there. He was speaking in testimony to the House Environmental Regulation Committee. He said, quote, Texas literally cannot afford this. It means the forfeiture of our federal highway dollars. It means the federal government restricting severely building and construction permitting throughout those areas, and it would mean economic disaster for the state, unquote.

Third, Texas Governor Rick Perry, speaking about rural lawmakers opposing funding for clean air: I think they will care about this issue. The loss of highway funding for those areas would be devastating. It would be political suicide to ignore it. We must clean the air in Houston, Texas, and we must do it now.

Fourth, Texas Senator Jon Lindsay, from a press release issued three years ago: The Clean Air Act comes with carrots and sticks. The carrot is that lowered ozone levels bring improved public health. On the other hand, there is a big stick awaiting should we fail to clean up the air, a stick that comes in the form of two dire economic penalties. The first penalty would be a total cutoff of federal highway funding. Although estimates vary, this could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in lost highway projects and approximately 5,000 construction jobs eliminated, not to mention the ripple effect on construction-related businesses. If you think traffic is bad now, imagine how bad it could be if we are unable to build any more roads.

You can see it is sanctions that make these deadlines work. Houston had a deadline in 1977. Deadline missed; no sanctions. Houston had a deadline in 1982. No sanctions. Houston got a deadline extension to 1987. No sanctions. Congress finally established a 2007 deadline for Houston, this time with sanctions. EPA proposes to rescind the threat of sanctions and set a new deadline, probably 2013.

The planning requirements for the 1-hour standard that EPA proposes to retain for Houston are not enough for the health of Houstonians. Texas has evaluated six different plans to clean up Houston's air. Several of these six plans were late or incomplete. Even so, Texas has submitted each of these six plans to the EPA with the assurance that each of the six was the latest and greatest way to clean up the air and that each would succeed in bringing Houston into compliance with the federal standards. The first four failed. The fifth was reworked in response to demands from industry. State officials now acknowledge that the sixth plan is insufficient.

EPA has really seemed to me to be disengaged from the most important issues facing Houston's clean air. Those Houston residents who care about clean air and are paying attention are really losing hope. A 2013 deadline for the 8- hour standard is not enough for the health of Houstonians. As many within EPA are well aware, Houston's ozone problem is different. It is different because it is the product of VOC concentrations that are three to five times more reactive than any other city in the country. In Houston, ozone can increase from a green level to a red level in less than three hours.

These reactive VOCs are proof that planning without the threat of sanctions is a failure. While the plans were being written during the 1980s and 1990s, industry brayed about removing 80 percent of its VOC emissions from the annual pollution reports. When someone finally checked, that missing 80 percent was found. It was right up in the skies above Houston. The actual pollution releases by chemical plants and refineries in the Houston area are three, five, ten and even fourteen times higher than reported.

Even now, industry grudgingly accepts that this is the reason that little progress has been made over the past decade in cleaning up the air pollution. What progress has been made is a result of two things, first, mandated requirements in the Clean Air Act was passed by Congress. Congress required that the so-called NOx RACT rules, reasonably available control technology, be installed, but Houston somehow got a delay from EPA for essentially five years in implementing those rules as mandated by Congress under the flawed theory that cleaning up the NOx emissions from plants in Houston would not improve Houston's air quality.

Now, I mean, we know that's not true, but somehow that got -- that was convincing enough to stall those regulations for five years. Well, after those regulations were implemented in 1999, we saw pollution levels decrease in 2000, 2001 and 2002. The mandates in the law make a difference.

Second, the other major pollution cleanup we have seen in Houston over the past eight or nine years was due to a mandate in the Texas electric deregulation bill that required electric utilities to reduce their NOx emissions in exchange for the deregulation program, and they bought into that tradeoff. So these mandates have to be enacted into statute and have to be followed and should not be abandoned by bureaucratic repeal.

The 8-hour standard itself --

MR. SILVASI: If I could, you are coming up close to your time. And under the rules, what we said is we would let other folks talk as they have signed up, and then we can have you come back after they have finished if you care to finish.

MR. WILSON: Okay. I will wrap up in just a minute. I missed the rules. I wasn't informed at the front of the time limit. Thank you.

MR. SILVASI: Okay.

MR. WILSON: The 8-hour standard itself is not enough for the health of Houstonians. Because of the high reactivity of Houston's VOC problem, Houston may well be the only city in the country that will continue to violate the 1- hour standard, even after it meets the 8-hour standard. Ozone levels can spike in Houston to levels above 150 parts per billion and return to much lower levels quite quickly.

On behalf of the many people in Houston who want to stop worrying about ozone warnings, toxics, air pollution, and most of all about our health, I ask you to maintain the 1-hour ozone standard. If EPA maintains the 1-hour ozone standard until it is attained by Houston and other cities, it is not necessary for EPA to require duplicative transportation conformity requirements as claimed in the rulemaking. EPA can find a way to require transportation conformity to be maintained at the most stringent level required by either the 1-hour standard or the 8-hour standard. Merging, rather than duplicating, transportation conformity requirements is the best way to maintain the public health protection provided by the transportation conformity rule without allowing states to backslide in their transportation plans.

As far as the other sentences in this plan go, many of the other people commenting on this proposal are offering a valuable implement. It was once EPA's intent to strengthen public health protection by adopting the

8-hour ozone standard. Please consider the input you are getting. Return to a focus on progress towards clean air, rather than adding yet another delay to the sorry saga of endless planning and endless pollution.

Thank you.

MR. SILVASI: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. SILVASI: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of John Wilson was concluded.)

MR. SILVASI: Before I call the next speaker, I will kind of reiterate the ground rules for some of those who may have arrived late and didn't hear that.

Because of the numbers of speakers we have had signed up and pre-registered and that are likely to show up without being pre-registered, we are asking the speakers to restrict the time of their testimony to five minutes. Denise Gerth will flash a sign up when you have about a minute left. Then what we will do is ask if you could hold off at that point. What we would do is if you still have more to say, after everyone else has testified, we can call you back if you want to continue or to add other remarks to your testimony. Of course, written comments that are submitted to the docket receive the same weight as comments submitted orally here at the public meeting, so anything that you want to express in any more detail can certainly be submitted in written form to the docket.

We move on to the next speaker that is signed up and that is available, Arthur Stamoulis, and then, after Arthur, John N. Kearney.

So, Arthur, are you available?

TESTIMONY OF ARTHUR STAMOULIS

MR. STAMOULIS: Thank you for the opportunity to present testimony today. My name is Arthur Stamoulis. I am here on behalf of the Clean Air Council, a 501(C)(3) environmental organization representing over 7,000 residents of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Established in 1967, the Council is dedicated to protecting the right of everyone to breathe clean air.

For the over 1 million Pennsylvanians suffering from some type of chronic breathing problem, including over 100,000 children, breathing can be difficult even in the absence of air pollution, and yet a significant number of Pennsylvania counties do not meet even the

1-hour health standard for ozone smog pollution, and more than 30 are expected to fail the more stringent 8-hour standard.

Ozone pollution in Pennsylvania is causing asthma attacks among young children. It is leading to premature deaths among the elderly. It is even damaging the lungs of perfectly healthy adults. Pennsylvanians need clean air now. The new 8-hour ozone standards should be implemented in such a way as to make sure all Americans can breathe clean, healthful air as soon as possible. For regions of the country that do not meet the basic ozone health standards, we need to maintain strong tools to improve air quality. When it comes to classifying nonattainment areas under the 8-hour standard, Subpart 2 of the Clean Air Act offers much stronger tools than Subpart 1.

Some of the Subpart 2-based programs that deliver critical emissions reductions in Pennsylvania include enhanced emissions inspection maintenance programs for vehicles, emissions offsets at higher than one-to-one ratios and lower thresholds for triggering new source review. Pennsylvania has come to rely on reductions from these and other Subpart 2 programs. It is, therefore, necessary to continue to utilize the Subpart 2 framework for the new standard.

Subpart 2 also contains more stringent attainment dates for cleaning up air quality than just Subpart 1. Coming into attainment sooner will prevent countless missed school and work days in Pennsylvania by helping to prevent needless asthma emergencies and other health problems. Regions that are not meeting human health standards need all the help they can get reducing pollution.

For this reason, the Council opposes EPA's proposed classification incentive feature and other proposals that would allow regions to be classified at lower classification levels than their current air quality justifies, based on modeling projections of cleaner air in the future. The Act's mechanism for determining the classification of an area has always been based on the best, most recent, actual data available. The Clean Air Council views as inappropriate and even reckless the attempt to replace this process with a reliance on best case scenario projections of what air quality may be at a later date.

The Clean Air Council also believes that new requirements for regions out of attainment of the 8-hour standard should be used in addition to, not in place of, existing requirements for meeting the 1-hour standard. For example, under the 1-hour standard, the Philadelphia area must reach attainment by 2005. Under the expected

8-hour standard, the Philadelphia area will not have to reach attainment until 2010 or even later.

This is an absurd result that EPA can avoid by withdrawing its first option for revocation. There cannot be a window during which new sources of pollution can be installed without meeting standards that were previously in place under the 1-hour rule. Again, the goal of these rules should be to enable people to breathe clean, healthful air as soon as possible. If a region faced more stringent requirements under the 1-hour standard than they initially would under the new standard, those more stringent requirements should remain in place until attainment for both the 1-hour and the 8-hour health standards are met.

Finally, the Clean Air Council proposes any attempts to weaken new source review requirements in any region. Air quality cannot improve if new sources of pollution can be created without careful planning to limit their unhealthful effects. EPA's proposal to revise new source review under a transitional program for areas that demonstrate they will meet health standards in the future does nothing but prolong the time before residents of dirty areas can breathe healthy air.

EPA's proposals appear to approach the implementation of the 8-hour ozone standard from the vantage point of allowing regions as much time as possible to meet the new standard. The result of such a misguided approach will be more asthma attacks, more emergency room visits, more missed days of school and work and more days when even the fittest of the fit should not exert energy outside.

Everyone deserves the right to breathe clean, healthy air today. EPA's proposal delays the promise of clean air for much too long.

Thank you very much.

MR. SILVASI: Thank you.

Any questions?

(No response.)

MR. SILVASI: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Arthur Stamoulis was concluded.)

MR. SILVASI: Has Blake Early joined us? He was here earlier and he apparently just stepped out.

John Kearney was the next person, and after John, Stephanie Sanchez.

TESTIMONY OF JOHN KEARNEY

MR. KEARNEY: First off, I thank you for giving us this opportunity provide comments. My name is John Kearney, and I am a staff attorney at the Clean Air Council in Philadelphia and the director of the Clean Air Council in Delaware. But I stand today to comment on behalf of a group that we helped put together in Delaware called the Visible Neighborhoods Environmental Justice Coalition. The Visible Neighborhoods Coalition seeks to provide environmental equality for all Delawarians.

I believe that Delaware provides a simple microcosm for understanding why this proposal is flawed and why what is being proposed here is reprehensible and inexcusable. For those that are not familiar with Delaware's geography, we have three counties stacked on top of each other like three blocks. Delaware has -- especially Wilmington has a long -- has suffered from three generations of pollution, going back from a history where we were the largest source of tanneries at one point in the early turn of the century, and we now suffer from problems left behind by 53 former tanneries and arsenic problems related to those.

The solutions for dealing with that are complex and difficult, but the solutions for dealing with the problem that we face due to ozone problems is relatively simple. I think the three counties of Delaware demonstrate that case in a good manner.

Our first county on top of the stack is New Castle County. It is currently -- Delaware is, so to speak, at the end of the tailpipe as well. Our top county, New Castle County, is currently out of attainment for the 1-hour standard and will also be out of attainment for the 8-hour standard. Like what others have said, it will be impossible for Delaware to reach attainment without help from upwind sources being cleaned up.

Already this year, we have had four Code Red days and, I believe, four exceedences of the 8-hour standard. So that would put us out of the team already this early in the season under the new 8-hour standard. Last year we had 15 Code Red days in Delaware, 11 Code Orange days; 81 times we exceeded either the 1-hour standard or the 8-hour standard; 8 times our southernmost county exceeded the 8-hour standard and the northernmost county did not. The southernmost county will now also be out of attainment of the 8-hour standard and not currently out of attainment of the 1-hour standard.

Our southernmost county some of you may be familiar with. That is where our ocean beaches are. It is very rural. But what is in that county is the largest source of pollution in Delaware, which is a large

coal-fired powerplant. So eight times, with basically the same airshed receiving sources of pollution from upwind sources, so eight times when New Castle County was not out of attainment, this large powerplant contributed to Sussex County, our southernmost county, being out of attainment. The University of Delaware also has a college in our southernmost county, and there is a researcher there that indicated that 70 percent of the NOx pollution in the southernmost county comes from this powerplant.

So the solution is to -- one easy solution is to provide for cleaning up these powerplants, and we feel that the options that are provided for here are shifting the burden away from cleaning up powerplants to smaller sources like possibly drycleaners, other smaller sources in the transportation section. We feel that that's the wrong approach to take.

The Clean Air Act was originally intended to provide technology forcing health-based standards, and it was designed to include an increasing of technology to clean up industrial sources. I am not asking you to take my word for that. I am going to cite a case from the 7th Circuit which is citing the Congressional Record at the time the Clean Air Act was passed.

It indicated -- and this is a quote from the 7th Circuit -- Clean Air Act amendments were enacted to speed up, expand and intensify the war against pollution in the United States with a view toward assuring that the air we breathe throughout the nation is wholesome once again.	We feel that what you are proposing is not providing wholesome air as soon as it could.

And I want to give you a couple of examples. Under the scheme that you are proposing, current law -- because our northernmost county is out of attainment under the 1-hour standard right now, we conceivably should be in attainment by 2005. Under the scheme that you are proposing, that standard will be gone, and there will be a new standard in place for our northernmost county to achieve attainment possibly as far as ten years. So, you know, it is pushing back when we would have to meet attainment.

You have heard about all of the proposals of option 1 versus option 2. Option 1 for our southernmost county would potentially require it to reach attainment within six years, but if you go to the less stringent option 2, then you would have the possibility of ten years or twelve years instead of the six under the scheme as devised. So we feel that you devised implementation of the standards that is not giving us the wholesome air that the Clean Air Act requires and the wholesome air that we need in Delaware.

Instead, it is giving us what we have had over the last four days in Delaware, which is unhealthy air, which is constricted lung function. It has adverse effects to the developing lungs. My three-year-old son, loves on hot days to go out at his daycare and have what he calls water days, but which your own EPA would recommend him not to do over the last four days. So we feel that this standard does not provide the wholesome clean air that the Clean Air Act demands, and we think that this is reprehensible and unexcusable.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of John Kearney was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: The next speaker will be Stephanie Sanchez.

MS. SANCHEZ: I'm here.

TESTIMONY OF STEPHANIE SANCHEZ

MS. SANCHEZ: Thank you very much to the EPA for allowing us to come down and comment. And I say come down, because I am coming from Norwalk, Connecticut. And there I represent the Greater Norwalk Clean Air Coalition, part of a 500,000-member organization in Connecticut involved with cleaning up the air in Connecticut.

So I am here today to ask for a strong federal presence from the EPA with regard to the more protective 8- hour ozone smog standard. I come before you as a former deputy mayor of Greenwich, Connecticut, where I felt frustrated over the polluted air coming from our neighbors in New York and New Jersey, because I was told it was a national issue to be tackled. Especially when it came to the issue of Westchester Airport in our own backyard, I had no local authority or control to deal effectively with the problem of airport emissions.

At several National League of Cities conferences I attended as part of the Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee, I also wanted to address the issue of polluted air coming from the Ohio coal burning plants. So the environment being one of my primary passions, I ran for national office to see what I could do about helping to clean up our air. It was on this campaign for Congress throughout the 4th Congressional District in the southwestern portion of Connecticut that I heard it said over and over what a problem the polluting powerplants were from my constituents. They are effectively known as the Sooty Six in Connecticut.

Considering that two of the Sooty Six powerplants, Bridgeport and Norwalk, are located in the district is not unrelated to the fact that this area is rated severe nonattainment on the EPA's map of ozone nonattainment areas. This Wisvest powerplant issue is literally the first issue I heard about in Bridgeport, when I was invited to join a state representative to protest outside the plant. It is a huge health issue for Bridgeport residents.

So I met with individuals, property owners, better breathing clubs associated with the American Lung Association. People were literally having a hard time breathing because of the pollution from the plant there. And no wonder. In 2000, the Sooty Six emitted over

9 million tons of the gas carbon dioxide, or CO2, the leading pollutant known to cause climate change. The harm from these plants is real and local, resulting in negative health and environmental impacts, as others have testified about here today. And I too have referenced some studies that I can include. You are well aware as the EPA of these health studies, particularly the hazards based on studies and court cases.

When it comes to environmental quality and issues of public health, not all communities are treated equally. Bridgeport is one of the poorest cities in the nation. Evidence clearly shows that communities of color have disproportionate numbers of environmental hazards. And, being conscious of the need for energy, we are obviously not asking these powerplants to shut down, only to clean up to meet modern pollution standards. And people have already discussed ways of doing this with technology, scrubbers and cleaner fuel, and it is not just a matter of concern to the urban areas where the plants are located. The pollutants affect a 30-mile radius, which is why we had a cross-section of support geographically as well as ideologically in our list of Clean Air Coalition endorsements.

Anecdotally, I was also being told by soccer clubs in Greenwich about the increased rates in asthma in their players, such an increase that the coaches were telling me they had to take collective timeouts so their players could get their inhalers. And if you have ever had an asthma attack -- and I personally have not, but a friend has described it to me. He described the severe burning in his chest. He was so deprived of air that his airways felt as if they were going to burst as he wheezed. The pain and pressure that this placed on his chest was so severe that tears came to his eyes as he lunged for his prescription inhaler.

My friend is lucky. He suffers from a mild form of asthma and can afford good medical care. He is in no immediate danger, yet thousands of other people, many of them children and people of color, endure the same condition, and many of them are not as lucky as my friend. The sad fact is that even in an affluent area with strong social and medical services, our children are choking on the air they breathe.

Incorporating a cleanup with the Sooty Six so that the plants would meet modern air standards was a public health issue that had to be addressed so that Connecticut's children and others vulnerable to respiratory illnesses no longer had to suffer needlessly. Despite statistical evidence of the increase in asthma rates and despite having the nation's highest per capita income, Connecticut ranks in the bottom 20 percent of states, according to per capita spending on public health.

And that ties into another point that I wanted to make, that in addition to the public health and quality of life aspects, there is the issue of fiscal responsibility as it relates to health care costs. Others will probably talk about it, but it bares the point that the cost of cleaner air will result in lower medical costs. Given the issue of treating respiratory illnesses like asthma, it is fiscally more responsible to pay for prevention rather than have to pay later with expensive treatments.

The EPA has even estimated that for every dollar spent on pollution reduction nationally, we will save $4 in medical costs. Why not do the right thing and be fiscally responsible at the same time? What we demanded and deserve was to have real on-site cleanup of these powerplants to meet the same emissions standards as the modern plants. We testified year after year -- it took five years -- and finally, these plants cleaned up. I am happy to say that it was passed by the General Assembly and signed by the Governor.

Subsequent legislation has led to even more improvements. We passed a mercury bill that is a lead in the nation for reducing mercury, and we have looked at other ways of additionally cleaning up our air. This relates to the fact that we have good news for cleaning up the air in Connecticut. What I learned from this campaign is that now that we have cleaned up our own house, first in terms of clean air, we can now ask for help nationally in terms of the coal-burning plants in Ohio and other pollutant sources as have been referenced here.

So we are asking for strong federal presence in ozone nonattainment areas. Southwestern Connecticut routinely violates the 8-hour rule put in place in 1997 under a previous administration, and further compounding this problem is the fact that a majority of the pollutants, as I have mentioned, are not produced in southwestern Connecticut. A combination of pollutants are emitted from poorly-run powerplants outside of the area, and locally, we have very limited options to address this.

Therefore, the EPA must enact strong, meaningful regulations like the 9/7 8-hour rule to ensure that we have clean air. I ask you to deal responsibly with this. We need help right now. Not a year from now, not two years from now, not twenty years from now, right now.

Thank you very much again for the opportunity to be here to comment on this.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

(Whereupon, the testimony of Stephanie Sanchez was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Phil Compton?

Phil come forward. The podium is yours.

MR. COMPTON: Thank you, sir.

TESTIMONY OF PHIL COMPTON

MR. COMPTON: Good morning. My name is Phil Compton. I am with the Florida Consumer Action Network, and today I represent our 40,000 dues-paying members in the state of Florida. Today my lungs hurt, and I want to know what you are going to do about it. I thought air in Tampa was bad. When I flew out Wednesday morning, Tampa quickly disappeared into a brown haze of smog, and this was after a week of solid rainfall, which is really totally unprecedented in our area. It scrubbed the air clean, but not for long. I had never experienced a Code Red day before. Now, I exercise almost every day. My cardiopulmonary fitness is excellent, yet today my lungs ache. I have never felt this way before. What are you going to do about it?

EPA's proposal won't help prevent Code Red days. It will ensure that we have more. In addition to this hearing, EPA should hold hearings in schools, assemble an auditorium of elementary school kids and ask for a show of hands of how many have asthma, then look into the eyes under that forest of young hands and explain to them why you have chosen to ensure that they will never be able to run and play normally throughout their entire childhood. Explain to them how they are not worth enough for us to do all that we are now capable of doing to clean up the air. If you can tell children to not play outside, you can tell polluters to install the devices that are available today that would prevent asthma and relieve the symptoms of millions of children who have developed asthma by breathing air at elevated ozone levels.

All areas of the United States should move toward compliance with both the 1- and the 8-hour standards as rapidly as possible. Spikes above .12 parts per billion in a one-hour period and extended periods of eight hours or more over 0.8 parts per billion, both do damage in different ways.

Now, before becoming a clean air advocate, I managed health care operations for many years. I can tell you that there is an enormous cost from pollution. It is paid by taxes, it is paid by consumers out of their own pockets, and it is paid by corporations in lost productivity.

Now, I am not even touching on the threat of mercury, which does cause depression, memory loss and lost productivity in very low levels. Cleaning up the ozone standards will also help remove this problem. Florida has a $4 billion recreational and commercial fishing industry, twice as big as any other state in America. This is currently threatened, because more and more people are realizing the threat to their own health that many fish in Florida now pose that they like to eat.

Investing in pollution control will provide a return on investment several times more than the cost. EPA can do more than Alan Greenspan can. It can do more than Congress can to jumpstart this economy and keep it running strong. There is a direct link between saving a little on pollution control and spending enormous sums on health care. The numbers may be posted in different columns, but Americans increasingly now see the connection. We can no longer tolerate delays; no loopholes, no extensions, no excuses.

My lungs ache today. What are you going to do about it? I urge you to write a rule with the most rigorous and aggressive standards possible on ozone.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Comments?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Phil Compton was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Charles Kleekamp, followed by Kathryn Kleekamp. Charles, I think you said you wanted to be called Chuck; is that right?

MR. KLEEKAMP: That's right.

MR. HELMS: The floor is yours, followed by your wife.

TESTIMONY OF CHARLES KLEEKAMP

MR. KLEEKAMP: Thank you, sir. If I may, I will give a copy of my written comments to the reporter for her assistance.

My name is Charles Kleekamp. I am a retired professional engineer living on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. I am a founding member and vice president of Cape Clean Air, a voluntary and independent advocacy group for better health through clean air.

In fighting for clean air through regulatory standards, I would like to draw your attention to a number of unfortunate situations that Cape Cod finds itself. We not only have our own local dirty fossil fuel powerplants to contend with, but we are also the recipient of downwind pollution from the Midwest. As evidence, I refer to the fact that our National Seashore is among the worst in the nation for air quality.

If I could digress, shown on the screen is a newspaper article from our Cape Cod Times, which illustrates that our National Seashore Park is choked by Midwest smog. It points out that in a study by the Park Service through monitors, our national park is worst in the nation for air quality, with only two exceptions for national parks in the state of California. The newspaper did even publish the details of the 8-hour ozone exceedences in their chart on the graph on the left, and it shows that above 85 parts per billion at our National Seashore for the last decade is above the standards, whereas the rest of the parks in the country are below. Indeed, tourism is the engine that drives the economy of Cape Cod, and so many others have spoken of the detrimental effects on health, so I will not repeat that at this moment.

In addition, in that particular article, the American Lung Association gives a failing grade, an F, if you will, for air quality on Cape Cod. It is the worst county for the 8-hour ozone standard in the state of Massachusetts for the fourth year in a row, based on our local monitor in Truro, which is in the National Seashore. In an astounding revelation, the 8-hour ozone air quality indicator for Cape Cod is 50 percent worse than the air quality indicator in the center of the city of Boston. The number of unhealthy days over the last two years on the Cape was 17, compared to Boston's 5 days.

This incongruous phenomena is partially explained by the unique microclimate on the Cape, where dual sea breeze circulation picks up the Midwest and regional powerplant pollution in the morning and funnels it back onto the Cape later in the midday. To better understand the flow of these pollution emissions and the possible implications and the elevated disease rates on the Cape, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health has contracted principals from three meteorological groups to develop a dispersion model that tracks pollution emanating not only from local but from regional and Midwest sources.

As an example case shown on the Viewgraph -- it is a little bit hard to discern the green land mass, but the arm of Cape Cod sticks out, as illustrated there. The arrowed vectors point in the morning breeze from a westerly direction, carrying pollutions from the Midwest as well as from local out over the ocean. This highlights only one particular powerplant in Brayton Point, and it shows the pollution early in the morning at 7:00 a.m. going out over the ocean, which is what the power industry would like us to believe in general.

The next illustration, which is a bit hard to see, shows that as the day warms up, rising air currents over the peninsula create a circulation or dual sea breeze from that fundus of pollution back to the Cape, where it is later deposited. What this clearly indicates is that not only local pollution can be trapped over the Cape, but that pollution from distant sources can be concentrated and redeposited over Cape Cod. Furthermore, the long-term trend for exceedence days of the 8-hour standard over the whole state of Massachusetts is getting worse. More will be said about that later.

The point of my testimony to you based on these observations is to adamantly request that you adopt your option 1, Subpart 2, for mandatory classification and stringent attainment deadlines with required control and planning obligation for all areas of the United States. This would make it easier for Cape Cod, as well as the whole state of Massachusetts, to achieve attainment of the more healthful 8-hour ozone limit in the shortest possible time, since we are largely downwind from the Midwest states.

Thank you very much.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

MR. SILVASI: Will you be able to make copies of your graphics available for the record?

MR. KLEEKAMP: Yes, and they are -- the color copies are in the possession of your reporter of these graphics.

MR. SILVASI: Thank you.

MR. KLEEKAMP: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Charles Kleekamp was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Next.

TESTIMONY OF KATHRYN KLEEKAMP

MS. KLEEKAMP: Good morning. My name is Kathryn Kleekamp. I am a retired medical microbiologist. I currently live on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and I am here today as a volunteer director and member of Cape Clean Air. This is a citizens group committed to attaining clean air standards.

As a very brief aside, I would just like to thank you for the privilege. I would really like to express my thanks to everyone here and tell you that I appreciate your concerns. I think we are sharing a lot of the same deleterious effects of air standards that need improvement.

I speak on behalf of thousands of Cape Cod residents who have a grave concern about our air quality. Massachusetts endured a severe ozone season in 2002, when ground-level ozone had 119 exceedences of the 8-hour standard. There were 22 exceedences of the 1-hour standard. During one particularly unrelenting hot spell, NAAQS monitors registered unhealthy ozone levels on nine out of ten days. Barnstable County, which is Cape Cod, continually exhibits the highest number of exceedence days in the Commonwealth. I realize that was a short period of time, but as you look at the chart on the overhead, the trend for exceeding the 8-hour standard over the last decade clearly indicates a worsening situation.

There has been a cascade of new scientific and medical data gathered since the 1997 periodic review of the national ambient air quality standards for ozone and particulate matter, and this data has very explicitly stated the role of particulates and ozone in pulmonary and other diseases.

A very recent major review of all of the scientific data since 1996 has been compiled by Jefferson Dickey, M.D., who is one of the founding members of the Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility. His review is called No Room to Breathe, Health Effects of Criteria Air Pollutants from Powerplants in 2002. In the executive summary, he states, and I am quoting: The association between ozone and many adverse health effects is certainly causal. And this is new because, until very recently, medical research said that ozone exacerbates asthma. He states that the health effects are certainly causal, and the association with excess mortality is certainly robust. The value of the health benefits nationally of lower ozone and particulate air pollution levels is estimated at

$32 billion, and the benefit to public health of reduced powerplant emissions seems well worth the cost.

I mentioned earlier the fact that Massachusetts is in serious nonattainment for the 8-hour ozone standard. I would add that in New England, the self-reported adult asthma rate was significantly higher than the combined rate for all the other 44 U.S. states and territories. Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine have the highest adult rates of asthma in the country.

In our state, we celebrated the passage two years ago by the Mass DEP of some of the most stringent powerplant emission regulations in the country to improve our air quality. Three successive Republican governors have supported these strict standards demanded by the people. Through the work of our state DEP, our legislators and volunteer advocacy groups, we have successfully forced owners of several of the antiquated dirty coal and oil burning -- we call them the Filthy Five -- powerplants to clean up their pollution emissions. Having accomplished this, it is an outrage to know that with all the success we have had in Massachusetts, if the EPA's preferred option 2 is enacted, our state will continue to be in nonattainment for ozone and no doubt will continue to see accelerating rates of asthma.

No matter how strict our regulations are, we are downwind from emissions coming from the other states. I encourage aggressive action with early deadlines. As a concerned citizen, I appeal to you to heavily weigh the medical costs of the negative impacts of air pollution against the profit motives of industry. I encourage you to stand firm, be confident, and brace aggressive action with early deadlines.

In closing, sacrificing human life and health for utility industry interests and outdated technology is incomprehensible in a modern and in a civilized world.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

MR. SILVASI: Your graphic is also in your testimony?

MRS. KLEEKAMP: Yes.

MR. SILVASI: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Kathryn Kleekamp was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Colleen Kiernan?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Let's go to Frank O'Donnell.

The podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF FRANK O'DONNELL

MR. O'DONNELL: Thank you very much, Mr. Helms, and good morning to you. You all are very patient, putting up with the crowd that we have here today. We appreciate it.

My name is Frank O'Donnell. I am the executive director of the Clean Air Trust, a national nonprofit organization. For the record, the address is 1625 K Street, Northwest, Suite 790, Washington, D.C. 20006. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

We believe that EPA's proposal would condemn tens of millions of Americans to continue breathing unhealthful levels of smog for years. In a purported effort to offer flexibility, EPA is really giving breaks to big polluters. Flexibility is good when it comes to yoga, but it is very bad for breathers in this context.

EPA's proposal, we believe, is a prescription for cleanup delay and an invitation for polluters to game the system, and breathers will suffer the consequences. We need to keep in mind that ozone, the main component of smog, remains a national public health problem. Those of us in the D.C. area are all too aware this week of this problem because of the frequent Code Red warnings we have had. Today we are lucky; apparently, it is only Code Orange. I know the folks coming up from North Carolina have seen their share of bad air also this week.

But we should be aware, everybody here, that already this year -- and it is not even July yet -- at least 35 states and the District of Columbia have experienced smog problems, levels of pollution above the 8-hour standard, according to information gathered by Clean Air Trust volunteers from EPA's own website and from state websites. And I should note that these include not just states that are infamous for smog, like Texas and California, but states throughout the nation, from Oklahoma to Ohio, Louisiana to Vermont, Iowa to Arizona. A list of those states is attached to my testimony.

Let me cite just two quick problems with the EPA proposals. One is some speakers here have already noted very eloquently that EPA proposes to scrap the 1-hour standard entirely before the air has been cleaned up sufficiently to meet it. The state of California, some of the witnesses here have been very vocal in their complaint that by postponing these deadlines, ongoing cleanup plans could be delayed or scrapped. We believe these fears, California's fears, the other speakers' fears, are well grounded, and we urge EPA to reconsider this approach.

The controls required to meet the 1-hour standard are going to be essential to meet the 8-hour standard also. To scrap the current program is, in effect, to endorse dirtier air for a longer time. Secondly, EPA would open up new loopholes in areas that violate the 8-hour standard but not the 1-hour standard by permitting these areas to avoid congressionally-mandated controls. This approach could well be illegal. It is most certainly arbitrary and illogical.

Consider just for a moment that under this approach, EPA would apply less stringent controls in such states as Ohio, Michigan, Mississippi, South Carolina and West Virginia than in New York, even though all of these states have chronically higher 8-hour smog levels than Queens, New York. And that is according to EPA's own information on its website. Talk about illogical.

So in conclusion, we hope that you will take a closer look at these problems and come back with something that truly protects the public, protects breathers everywhere in the country.

Thank you very much.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Frank O'Donnell was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: We will try again. Colleen Kiernan?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Bear with us as we sort through and try to do this in as efficient manner as we can.

Is James Brooks present?

MR. BROOKS: Right here.

MR. HELMS: The floor is yours, James.

Melissa Ladd is next. Melissa, you will follow.

The podium is yours.

MR. BROOKS: Thank you.

TESTIMONY OF JAMES BROOKS

MR. BROOKS: Good morning. I want to thank EPA for allowing NESCAUM, Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, to comment on EPA's proposed 8-hour ozone rule. My name is Jim Brooks. I am the director of the Bureau of Air Quality and the Maine DEP. I am here today on behalf of the NESCAUM states, which represents the six New England states, plus New Jersey and New York.

The 8-hour ozone standard was promulgated based on findings that the 1-hour standard did not provide adequate public health protection and that adverse health effects occurred at lower levels over longer exposure times than the 1-hour standard. Different people came up today and talked about asthmatics and how they are impacted by ozone.

I have a daughter that is 12 years old. In the early parts of her life on these hot summer days, there were times where she could hardly breathe. When you have a young kid in your arms that is turning gray and you are rushing them to the hospital, cleaning up the air gives you a whole different meaning. As my grandpappy would say, it is a hard way to make a biscuit.

In evaluating EPA's proposal, our main consideration is assessing whether it will afford adequate public health protection as expeditiously as possible, as required by the Clean Air Act. My comments highlight a few of our initial responses to the proposal. I have really four major points that I want to make.

The first point is that this proposal is challenging to read. I think I went to sleep many a night reading the proposal. It seems like I always would hit page 22 and then the next couple of pages I would read over and over and over again. It lacks proposed regulatory language and offers vague options for each major program component. The scenario easily leads to misunderstanding and could result in a severely mismatched final rule. EPA should release for public comment as soon as possible draft regulatory language for a single implementation framework, as well as for the options.

Second, in its quest to provide flexibility, we believe EPA appears to stray too far from the text and the mandates of the Clean Air Act. While we appreciate EPA's efforts to allow flexibility and we do believe some of the proposed options are innovative and are worth exploring, certain options we don't like, and we feel that they come at the expense of public health protection and expeditious implementation. We will provide in our written testimony comments a more detailed explanation of what we feel is good and what we feel is bad.

In 1990 in response to pass/failures, Congress established specific ozone requirements under Subpart 2 to ensure progress and accountability in implementing the ozone standard. We are concerned that EPA's proposal to designate areas under Subpart 1 is not based on sound science, does not provide appropriate accountability and will not afford public health protection in a timely manner and is not responsive to the Supreme Court's decision.

Since 1990, states with 1-hour nonattainment areas have made tremendous strides to reduce ozone levels under the provisions of Subpart 2. The public health benefits from the past implementation of Subpart 2 must not be ignored, and we are concerned that they will be, if EPA chooses to implement under Subpart 1. Under EPA's preferred option, two areas with identical design values will have very different requirements. EPA must also ensure that appropriate time frames and backstops are in place, including sanctions for failure to act. EPA's proposal allows significant leeway to areas that would be designated under the Subpart 1 option with very few requirements or incentives to act prior to the five-year deadline extension of 2014. This would delay public health protection for citizens in those areas and create inequities between areas designated under Subpart 1 and 2. This also perpetuates the problem where downwind areas cannot attain because upwind areas do not yet have to attain the standard.

Third, EPA's proposal does little to address ozone transport. Instead of proposing a framework to address transport such as a SIP approval process requiring Section 110(A), assessments of downwind contributions, EPA indicates that the NOx SIP call under Section 126 will address transport up front. While a SIP call may address transport for the 1- hour standard, it does not do so for the stricter 8-hour standard.

EPA also indicates that additional reductions could be realized through the Clear Skies Act. Clear Skies is pending in the legislation and, as such, we don't believe it is relevant to this proposed rulemaking. EPA's analysis also indicates Clear Skies would deliver only marginal ozone benefits after a decade of attainment dates. We need commitments to real and significant NOx reductions that coincides with attainment dates. We urge EPA to reconsider the options we submitted in April 2002 through the Ozone Transport Commission regarding transport and ozone implementation.

Fourth, we are concerned that EPA's proposal relies too heavily on modeling rather than monitoring results and other metrics to help make critical state SIP determinations. EPA has not recommended a specific model, yet modeling will be the cornerstone for many demonstrations. EPA must ensure that modeling criteria are well defined and that other metrics are included in their demonstrations. We believe modeling is a tool and should be used as such. It should not be the sole method for determining whether an area's ozone problem or contribution to a downwind area has been addressed.

As I said before, we will be submitting more detailed written comments, and I thank you again for allowing us to testify.

MR. HELMS: Thank you, Jim. Just one clarification question: You mentioned you had submitted in the past recommendations on transport.

MR. BROOKS: Yes, for the Ozone Transport Commission.

MR. HELMS: Can you resurface those and make sure they are introduced into the record?

MR. BROOKS: Yes. Yes, we will do so.

MR. SILVASI: They are actually, I believe, in our docket now -- before we opened the docket for this proposal. I think they may still be there, but it might not hurt to resubmit them, just so that they are there.

MR. BROOKS: We will do so. Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you, Jim.

(Whereupon, the testimony of James Brooks was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Melissa Ladd, the podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF MELISSA LADD

MS. LADD: Good morning. My name is Melissa Ladd, and I am the national issues director for the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League. The Conservation League is a nonprofit public interest group with over 4,000 members in South Carolina and beyond.

In South Carolina, air pollution is a rapidly growing concern. South Carolinians are worried about everything from summer ozone alerts disrupting football practices to the growing number of asthma attacks that affect our residents statewide, young and old. Giving areas with poor air quality more time to reverse the poor air quality trends is not in the best interest of public health or the environment, and we are opposed to EPA's proposal to do so.

The option that you call flexibility will only prolong the adverse human health and environmental effects that this Agency is directly charged with controlling and reducing. It would prove pointless to have a federal air law if, as you now propose, each state is allowed to regulate at different levels. The inevitable problem that will occur is that one state will be on the right track, but it will be surrounded by many others who will be doing less to combat air pollution. This is what federal law needs to step in and ensure, that all U.S. citizens will have the same protections. It is what we all deserve.

You have listed in your fact sheet about the proposed rule some of the adverse health effects of ozone, such as decreased lung function in children, increased respiratory symptoms and more hospital and ER visits due to asthma. Indeed, some 2,500 South Carolinians are sent to the emergency room every year due to asthma attacks.

Our state is experiencing the exact symptoms that you have predicted as a result of ozone pollution, and we ask for your help in keeping to a strict timeline to solve this problem and bettering the health of our residents.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions, comments?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: I do have one question. Are you involved in the Early Action Compact effort that is underway in South Carolina?

MS. LADD: I am, and that is part of the reason that we are so concerned about the states around us, because, while North Carolina has a wonderful air pollution law and we are working so hard on an early action plan, if there is no federal law overseeing a minimum amount to other states, say Georgia and Florida and Tennessee, then our efforts are going to be for naught, because the air from those other states won't be up to quality.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Melissa Ladd was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Jason Babbie?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: I am doing a double check to make sure we haven't overlooked anyone.

Chris Recchia?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I think he stepped out.

MR. HELMS: Stepped out. That's always the way it works, is when you are called, you step out.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Here he is.

MR. HELMS: Chris, you ought to know better than to step out on Tom Helms.

MR. RECCHIA: It was Jim Brooks' fault outside.

MR. HELMS: The podium is yours.

MR. RECCHIA: Thank you so much.

TESTIMONY OF CHRISTOPHER RECCHIA

MR. RECCHIA: Thank you all very much. I apologize for doing that, stepping out of the room.

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to testify to you today on the 8-hour national ambient air quality standard implementation. My name is Chris Recchia. I am the executive director of the Ozone Transport Commission, and I am testifying today on behalf of the Commission. We do have written statements and comments which are provided in multiple copies, and I can provide a copy as well for your docket.

I just want to say, just as general background, that OTC is created by Congress under the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 to coordinate ground-level ozone air pollution planning in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. It represents 12 eastern and

Mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia.

Now, as I think EPA is aware, OTC works regularly and constructively with EPA on a variety of air issues, and we are always pleased to champion EPA's good work as recently as its proposed diesel rules. Unfortunately, today is not one of those occasions. OTC does oppose the use of option 2 in the draft rule as it is proposed and won't support the rule if that is continued.

OTC is most concerned that the draft 8-hour ozone standard implementation rule does nothing to address transport, nor does it draw upon existing provisions of the Clean Air Act to address transport. Specifically, the proposed rule does not include effective measures to counter the effects of pollution transport on air quality in nonattainment areas. And, unless the rule includes such measures, the nonattainment areas will be driven to take increasingly more costly and less cost effective actions to reduce ozone concentrations.

This doesn't make good, sound economic or policy sense when there are more cost effective measures available that address sources contributing to the transport problem. It also exacerbates an ongoing inequity between upwind sources in the ozone transport region. That is, frankly, inexcusable in this day. The OTC states incur higher energy costs as a result of doing the right thing, and we continue to experience premature deaths and respiratory illnesses related to or as a direct result of the pollution resulting from these upwind sources.

Today, as you are likely aware, we are still awaiting full implementation of the regional rules that were developed to address transport in 1997. Science tells us that the 8-hour ozone levels in our region are affected more by ozone transport than even the 1-hour levels. Economics tells us the regional solutions are more cost effective. We believe there are better options available, other than simply expanding nonattainment areas to hold upwind areas accountable for their impact on downwind areas. Simply put, states won't be able to solve a regional problem with increasingly expensive local control measures.

OTC believes that four critical principles should guide the implementation of the 8-hour standard. One, public health first. Classification and implementation for the 8- hour standard must be developed to ensure attainment as expeditiously as possible so that public health protection is not delayed. OTC is concerned with policies that forego requiring specific control measures that delay the requirement of control measures or weaken the existing requirements.

Specifically, the preference for designating areas under Clean Air Act Title I, Part D, Subpart 1, this is really the crux of our comments. We think that we will forego application of effective proven measures that existing nonattainment areas within the OTR already have in place, such as inspection and maintenance of vehicles and NOx RACT, to mention two.

Further, the proposed Early Action Compacts for areas classified under Subpart 1 create the potential for significant delays in SIP submittals and achieving reductions. Areas with Early Action Compact agreements that are not able to demonstrate attainment by the end of 2007 may not ultimately need to demonstrate attainment until 2020. SIP submittals would not be required until 2008 versus 2004, and Subpart 1 allows significant extensions. There are currently 35 areas intending to pursue Early Action Compacts, and many of these are upwind from the OTR. We believe that EPA will eviscerate the SIP call with Subpart 1 being implemented because of those upwind areas.

Second point, accountability and fair share. We believe everybody should be accountable -- I am just going to summarize this to not take your time. We believe that all the ozone region areas that are in nonattainment should be held accountable for their emissions. We are doing the best we can and will continue to do more, but we think upwind areas that contribute to that unhealthful air quality must also be held accountable. We don't believe the option to Subpart 1 allows for accountability in addition to flexibility you provide.

Third point, effective national and regional controls. Strong and timely national/regional base level controls are necessary. We have used them in region. We think that the members that are contributing to our air quality problems should be held accountable too. OTC believes the same type of control measures already in place throughout the OTR should be applied in upwind areas affecting air quality in the region. These have proven cost effective and scientifically effective. Potential measures include those required in the OTR by Subpart 2, so we are supportive of applying Subpart 2.

The last point is flexibility, which I know you have tried to provide in this Subpart 1 option. Unfortunately, again, as I mentioned before, it provides flexibility without, we believe, accountability to those sources. It could be many, many years by the time we get done with the extensions and the best efforts and all the statements and demonstrations that a state will achieve something, but by the time we figure out something has gone awry, we will be decades down the road still before we get attainment. And that is just not acceptable to the OTC region at this point.

Again, we state the objection to the rule unless implementation occurs under option 1, with all nonattainment areas and areas contributing to nonattainment, subject to Subpart 2. And the key there was areas contributing to nonattainment in addition to any expanded nonattainment area.

That is really it. I thank you again very much for the opportunity to testify, and we stand ready to work with you and continue to work with you in any way we can. Thanks very much.

MR. HELMS: Thank you, Chris.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Christopher Recchia was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Blake Early?

MR. EARLY: Yes.

MR. HELMS: The podium is yours, Blake.

TESTIMONY OF A. BLAKEMAN EARLY

MR. EARLY: Good morning. I am Blakeman Early. I am speaking on behalf of the American Lung Association. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Many of my remarks are going to sound familiar to you because they, in fact, repeat many of the same things that have been raised by other people who have testified.

The only element which I will focus in on is that we believe that the elements of the EPA proposal is deja vu all over again. When the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee reported its version of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, it took note of the lack of success in providing the nation with clean air. After observing that in 1989, 150 million people still lived in areas that violated the health standards for ozone and carbon monoxide, the Committee found the following:

The responsibility for the widespread failure to meet the ambient standards rests with both states and local governments, and EPA predicting future air quality based on assumed control programs is a complicated undertaking that is susceptible to paper demonstrations of attainment, that they are little relation to the likelihood of actual attainment.

The Committee went on to find that the inadequacies in emissions inventories and modeling, failure to implement needed controls and the failure of EPA and the states to require additional controls when needed reductions were not achieved all contributed to the lack of success of combatting air pollution during the 1980s. The Committee also notes that, quote, a lack of resources at the federal, state and local level has severely hampered implementation of the Act's requirements.

The Committee proposed legislation that was far more prescriptive, requiring that minimum emission control programs be included in the state implementation plans, adopted in accordance with emission reduction milestones and mandatory revisions when deadlines were exceeded. This scheme is at the heart of the so-called Subpart 2 of the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 that were adopted.

The American Lung Association believes that this approach has been successful. We are now striving to launch a new initiative to combat air pollution, in recognition of new research which shows that human exposure at lower concentrations of ozone for longer periods of time is equally dangerous, if not more so, than spikes of ozone. As a result, EPA estimates 178 million people live in areas that will be designated nonattainment for the 8-hour standard for ozone. This number is significant, not because it represents a failure of the effort to reduce ozone in the 1990s, but because it provides a sense of how big a job lies ahead to reduce unhealthy levels of ozone.

The American Lung Association finds that many of the elements of this proposal, if adopted, use the exact failed approach of the 1980s in the name of providing flexibility for those new nonattainment areas that violate the 8-hour ozone health standards but not the 1-hour standard. In light of a lack of resources at the state and local level and at EPA, just as was noted occurred in the 1980s by the Environment Committee, we conclude the inevitable result of this approach will be failure.

Furthermore, although the EPA claims the proposal would maintain progress in reducing ozone in areas that still violate the 1-hour health standard, we believe it weakens requirements and extends deadlines for action and that such progress will unnecessarily be slowed and, perhaps, even halted.

The EPA asserts that a more flexible approach will achieve attainment at a lower cost. While EPA acknowledges that the Clean Air Act requires attainment as soon as practicable, the implication is that there are not sufficient benefits for achieving attainment earlier than the numeric deadlines required in the statute to merit such an effort. EPA has provided no information to substantiate such a position. The American Lung Association asserts that in light of the fact that a succession of deadlines for achieving healthy levels of ozone have been missed for nearly 30 years, a maximum effort is called for. This proposal contains far too many options that we fear would result in a minimal effort in many areas of the country.

While the EPA proposal may provide lower financial cost to polluters, it is far too likely to provide a higher personal and financial cost to our nation's children, seniors and citizens who suffer from asthma or chronic lung disease. The cost to these people in increased medical expenses, hospital visits, emergency room visits, lost work time and decreased quality of life is well documented and preventable with aggressive action to reduce pollution.

The ALA will provide detailed comments, but let me just highlight some major recommendations that we will be going into in greater detail. First of all, the Agency should not revoke the 1-hour ozone standard. Such a policy in essence delays attainment with ozone reduction goals by our calculation five to ten years, and possibly even longer. EPA should not allow maintenance areas, areas that previously violated the 1-hour standard and now are operating under a so- called maintenance plan, to abandon those maintenance plans and to abandon transportation conformity requirements.

Maintenance plans provide the benefit of preventing increases of ozone in such areas that are using them during the preparation and implementation of their

8-hour state implementation plans. EPA should apply Subpart 2 to all new 8-hour nonattainment areas classified moderate or above to the greatest extent possible. It is clear that Congress abandoned the approach of Subpart 1 for reducing ozone in areas with moderate or more serious ozone levels.

We believe EPA should adopt an approach that is consistent with the intent of Congress that follows Subpart 2. EPA should significantly limit the use of modeling to avoid emission reduction programs or requirements. We have seen that Congress noted that models were gained in the past. Notwithstanding the advances in modeling technology and analysis, we believe the burden falls on EPA to justify the broad substitution of modeling for actual emissions reductions. We do not need to return to the days of the paper demonstrations.

EPA should not reduce SIP requirements for clean air development communities. While the American Lung Association encourages efforts to promote development in ways that reduce its impact on air quality, there is simply insufficient information available today to calculate the amount and time frame of these benefits for purposes of providing SIP credit or relaxing new source review requirements.

As I said, the Lung Association will provide detailed comments in writing. I do want to acknowledge the effort of the Agency to involve the public and stakeholder groups the opportunity to influence the development of these regulations, but we need tighter regulations, and we need them as quickly as we can so we can get on with the job of reducing health threatening air pollution.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

Questions, comments?

MS. TIERNEY: Could you repeat the point you made? Toward the end you said apply Subpart 2 to all and then you said something about moderate, and I didn't quite catch what you were saying.

MR. EARLY: Areas that the Agency is proposing to classify as moderate and above should be subject to a Subpart 2 style of requirement. As is true with the

1-hour standard, areas classified as marginal, in light of the fact that they only have a three-year deadline, you use a more Subpart 1 style of requirements, and we think that is appropriate. But for moderate and above, we think it needs a full Subpart 2 approach.

MS. TIERNEY: Okay.

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of A. Blakeman Early was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Katy Hubener?

(Whereupon, there was a brief discussion off the record.)

TESTIMONY OF KATY HUBENER

MS. HUBENER: Good morning. My name is Katy Hubener, and I am the executive director for the North Texas- based air quality group, The Blue Skies Alliance. Today I am here to speak on behalf of the 4.5 million North Texas residents who are still living with lung scorching ozone and have for far too long.

As you know, and as Region 6 has had many discussions with us, you are well aware that the region has repeatedly missed key clean air deadlines, both in 1996 and 1999, and is currently not on track to reach attainment by 2005 or 2007. It is in reviewing the repeated failures to attain the 1-hour standard which gives me great pause.

I am further troubled by the 8-hour plan before us, primarily because it appears that as we move towards a cleaner standard, the EPA has offered a series of menu items which will weaken clean air protections. These rollbacks send a clear message to folks in Texas that dirty polluters have more political power than do breathers. Furthermore, these rollbacks give credence that if you like to breathe or need to breathe, then you should send President Bush back to Texas.

It is important to note that these national policies were born and bred in Texas, and they ring an all too familiar tune. What we are seeing now are things like voluntary emission reductions, Cap-and-Trade programs, failure to ratchet down on industrial sources and enforce new source review, regulatory flexibility, reluctance to designate areas nonattainment and fuzzy map policies.	It is important to note that these policies, rooted more in political prowess rather than sound science, didn't work in Texas and won't work for the country.

In regards to the current items before us, let me cite specific concerns with the following frameworks: We agree with our colleagues that revoking the 1-hour standard for the 8-hour standard -- we disagree with the EPA's position on that. We disagree with extensions of deadlines for nonattainment areas. We disagree with looser NSR requirements for areas which violate the 8-hour standard but not the 1-hour standard. We think that there needs to be more stringent controls, and we disagree with the flexibility of Subpart 1.

Like many of my colleagues before, we take issue with the EPA's willingness to revoke the 1-hour standard before areas reach attainment. In North Texas, we believe this would be a setback for human health and would allow for perpetual ozone season. It is sound public policy to keep the 1-hour standard in place to ensure that momentum continues towards clearing the air.

As EPA is well aware, advancements in clean air coincided with the 1990 Clean Air Act amendment and the implementations of specific Subpart 2 measurements and designations. These Subpart 2 measures were marked with much success, especially for North Texas breathers. We note that the EPA will utilize a framework which offers specific, proscriptive and mandatory reductions, including those strategies included in Subpart 2.

Becky Bornhorst, a resident of North Texas, testified before the EPA in Dallas, saying no extensions, no delays; clean air is about public health, and the EPA should not forget that. What Ms. Bornhorst didn't tell you is that she began working for clean air when her children were in preschool. Today, one of her kids is in college, and the other is about to graduate from high school. Ms. Bornhorst, like many others in North Texas, believed that if they just told you they wanted clean air, you would deliver.

On behalf of her and the remaining 4.5 million residents of North Texas, we are asking that you deliver, deliver the promises of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments and the 1970 Clean Air Act. No more extensions, no more delays; deliver.

On behalf of Sue Pope and Debbie Markwardt, who live beneath the ominous stacks of Texas Industries, the largest polluter in North Texas and a toxic toilet for burning hazardous waste, we wish to raise concerns with the literal weakening of clean air protection while we impose a cleaner and more protective standard. Specifically, it is our concern that by not imposing the same stringent requirements for areas which violate the

8-hour standard but not the 1-hour standard constitutes a loophole.

In North Texas, four counties are designated nonattainment for the 1-hour standard; however, one county, Ellis County, also violated the 1-hour standard and was not designated accordingly. Coincidentally, that county is home to the largest concentration of industrial sources in North Texas and the home of Congressman Joe Barton, the author of the bill, which, if passed, will make legal the dirty air plants before us today.

It is our hope that the EPA will implement the same stringent requirements for areas which fail to attain solely the 8-hour standard and those which fail to attain both the 1- hour and 8-hour standard. By implementing less stringent requirements, the EPA is allowing for continued ring-around-
the-regions, like Dallas-Fort Worth, where industrial sources moved literally a block away from the county line to escape complying with LAER and offset requirements.

In conclusion, we hope that the EPA will deliver, deliver more than 33 years of promises that industrial sources will do their fair share of clean air. Deliver on a commitment to public health, which should be your first charge.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Katy Hubener was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Pamela Irwin? Is Pamela Irwin present?

MS. IRWIN: I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting to be called yet.

MR. SILVASI: Do you need more time?

MS. IRWIN: If you could give me more --

MR. HELMS: Yes, we can do that, certainly. Would be glad to.

MS. IRWIN: Thanks.

MR. HELMS: I would like to call Mark Mitchell and then Colleen Kiernan next.

Mark Mitchell, the podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF MARK MITCHELL

MR. MITCHELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to speak. I am Mark Mitchell. I am a public health physician. I was previously the director of the Hartford Health Department and, before that, I was the deputy director of the Kansas City, Missouri Health Department. Now I am president of the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice. I am here to speak in opposition to the use of option 2, that would delay the implementation of the ozone standards, and also in opposition to the elimination of the 1- hour ozone standards.

I went into environmental health and environmental justice because of my concerns about health, about public health, and that many of the diseases in the U.S. that are increasing are, in fact, related to the environment. We are particularly concerned in Connecticut about asthma. The community is particularly concerned about asthma. There are several studies in Connecticut, one of them showing that as much as 41 percent of children --

MR. HELMS: Hold on a second.

Could I ask all of you to either take a seat or take your conversations outside? It is not fair to the speaker to have competing conversations, so please do that.

Thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but we want to hear your testimony.

MR. MITCHELL: Thank you.

As I was saying, I went into environmental health because I was concerned because so many illnesses that we see in public health that are increasing are related to the environment. The community residents in Connecticut are particularly concerned about asthma, and we have very high rates of asthma and there are some pockets that are higher than others.

There is one study in Hartford of 11,000 children, a screen that showed that 41 percent of the children and 48 percent of the Latino children have asthma. We believe that a lot of that asthma has to do with air pollution, both industrial sources as well as the ozone. Children are the most vulnerable people for asthma. The asthma incidence, the new cases of asthma, is highest in children between 1 and 5 years of age. The group that has the second highest incidence of asthma are people in their 30s.

The asthma deaths, though, about half of the asthma deaths are in the elderly, people over 65 years of age. Both of these groups are more susceptible to ozone exposure and asthma. Also, as you know, the leading chronic -- the leading cause of school absenteeism for a chronic disease is asthma, according to several studies. There are studies that show that when the ozone is elevated that the emergency room rates for people coming in for respiratory conditions increase 20 percent.

That is why we believe that is important that EPA go with all deliberate speed at implementing both the 1-hour and the 8-hour ozone standard. As you know, asthma is an acute condition. Exposure to ozone for short periods of time, for periods of 10 minutes, can trigger asthma attacks in people who already have asthma. People who have asthma -- the asthma rates have increased over the last 20 years. They have approximately doubled in the last 20 years. The asthma death rates have about tripled in the last 20 years. As you know, people don't die of asthma unless they have asthma attacks.

Now, obviously, all of the asthma is not due to ozone. It is a very complicated multifactorial disease. But recent evidence shows that not only can ozone trigger asthma attacks in people who already have asthma, but that ozone actually can cause asthma in healthy individuals. For these reasons, we believe that short-term exposure is very, very important, that the 1-hour standard needs to stay in place so that we can both lower asthma attacks in people who already have asthma and also prevent particularly children from developing asthma.

Again, I would ask that EPA go with all deliberate speed in implementation of both the 8-hour standard and maintenance of the 1-hour standard to protect the health of our residents.

The last thing that I wanted to talk about was about environmental justice. As you may know, environmental justice refers to the fact that low income communities and communities of color are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and are disproportionately burdened with environmentally related diseases. The asthma hospitalization rates are much higher in communities of color and the -- the major concern is with Clear Skies and other recent initiatives that the lack of enforcement on powerplants -- powerplants are also disproportionately located in low income communities and older communities.

If we do not have new source review, if we exempt powerplants from more stringent standards, then we will continue to see a disparity in asthma rates for urban areas versus non-urban areas, and we believe that this is simply not fair.

So I want to thank you for your time, and I will answer any questions that you may have.

MR. HELMS: Thank you, Dr. Mitchell.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Mark Mitchell was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Colleen Kiernan.

TESTIMONY OF COLLEEN KIERNAN

MS. KIERNAN: Good morning. Thank you all for being here today and thank you for giving us the opportunity to comment on this sort of idea of a proposed rule. My name is Colleen Kiernan, and I am the Georgia energy project organizer for the Sierra Club. I am based in Atlanta, Georgia. I would like to start out by supporting the comments of my fellow Atlantans from earlier, both Dr. Frank and Anthony and Illai from the Georgia Kids Against Pollution.

The comments that I would like to make today are four points regarding my concern for possible implications that this proposed rule could have on Atlanta and Georgia. The first is that EPA's proposed transition from the

1-hour to the 8-hour standard is troubling.

On April 15, 2004, metro Atlanta will be a severe nonattainment area that will still be operating under a serious nonattainment SIP because Georgia will still be in the process of writing a severe nonattainment SIP. If EPA had not illegally extended Atlanta's attainment deadline, we would not have it. We would have had a severe nonattainment SIP in 2000 or 2001. Thus, the regulations must require Georgia not to backslide from a severe nonattainment SIP. To do otherwise would be to continue to use this illegal downwind extension and would be an end run around the 11th Circuit Court decision.

The second point is that the incentive feature has no statutory basis and is, in fact, contrary to the statute. The first example I would like to give is the city of Macon, Georgia. Macon has been violating the

1-hour standard but has never been designated nonattainment for the 1-hour standard. So under this proposed 8-hour rule in the incentive feature, they can get designated at a lower area, whereas -- you know, the reality of the situation is they should have already had been required to write an implementation plan and they should already be moving forward to clean up their air. You know, particularly for the city of Macon, EPA's proposed rule is definitely going to extend in delayed pollution cleanup and leave Macon area residents at risk.

Also, it doesn't account for the increase in mobile source pollution or increase stationary source pollution that would come on line after the incentive feature was used. So, for example, if a coal-fired powerplant got permitted in South Carolina -- which it is my understanding that it will be in August of 2004 -- there would be no way to go back and account for this, because the incentive feature would have already been used.

The incentive feature also would allow nonattainment areas to avoid additional local controls, which contradicts the many years of work that the Southern Appalachian Mountain initiatives did, which found that local controls do the most to reduce episodes of

ground-level ozone.

My third point is that EPA asserts that regional modeling shows that most 8-hour nonattainment areas will attain in 2007. That is based on reductions from the NOx SIP call. However, there is reason to believe that Georgia, Alabama, Missouri or Michigan will be compliant with the NOx SIP call by 2007, because EPA has failed to finalize the rule for those states in response to the Court's remand in the Michigan versus EPA suit. So either EPA needs to re-do the air modeling or not rely on this assumption at all. Furthermore, this assumption is probably based on NSR before it was gutted in the recent Bush Administration rollbacks of NSR.

My last point is that marginal nonattainment should start at 80 parts per million, not 85 parts per million. The scientific evidence indicated that levels between 80 and 84 parts per million is not safe and the monitors can go out three decimal places now, and there is just no reason to leave that area unprotected.

So, in conclusion, I would like to urge EPA to take a much more aggressive and speedy way to get us to clean air. Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

MR. SILVASI: Do you plan to submit written comments also?

MS. KIERNAN: I will. My printer wasn't working, so we will get them in.

MR. SILVASI: Okay. Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Colleen Kiernan was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Is Jill Stephens here?

Jill, the podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF JILL STEPHENS

MS. STEPHENS: Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I am here representing the National Parks Conversation Association, on behalf of our more than 300,000 members across the United States. NPCA was founded in 1919. We are the only national nonprofit conservation organization dedicated exclusively to the preservation, protection and enhancement of our national parks.

We are concerned that this proposal to implement the 8-hour ozone standard delays the cleanup of ozone pollution, which means unhealthy air for parks and people. Our national parks were created to preserve some of America's most inspirational, natural, cultural and historic landmarks. They attract nearly 300 million visitors each year. On too many occasions, both visitors and park employees find their health at risk by simply breathing the air in our national parks.

For example, at Joshua Tree National Park in California, ozone levels exceeded the 8-hour standard on 68 days in one year alone. Joshua Tree frequently records pollution levels that violate the less protective 1-hour standard. This park preserves nearly 800,000 acres as extinct Colorado and Mojave Desert, as well as more than 700 plant species and a variety of wildlife, including bighorn sheep and threatened desert tortoises. Despite the poor air quality, visitors come to the park to rock climb, to hike, to bike, to walk along the park.

Unfortunately, Joshua Tree is not alone. In fact, nine national parks fail to meet the 8-hour ozone standard, based on pollution data from 1997 through 1999. These are Joshua Tree, Sequoia and Yosemite in California, Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina, Shenandoah in Virginia, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Acadia in Maine, along with Cape Cod National Seashore and Cowpens National Battlefield.

It is important to note that this is only a small sample of the parks that violate this standard, where air quality violates this standard, air pollution violates this standard. Only a small number monitor pollution. There are many parks located in or near urban areas where there are all too many Code Red Days.

Plants are vulnerable to damage from ozone levels much lower than those set to protect human health. Ozone can decrease yielded agricultural crops, reduce forest growth and leave plants more susceptible to disease, drought and pests. From black cherry trees in Shenandoah to Jeffrey and Ponderosa pines in Yosemite, vegetation in our parks already shows signs of damage from ozone. Sequoia seedlings are sensitive to ozone levels present almost constantly in the summer months at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. A correlation exists between ozone exposure and decreased growth rates in Eastern white pine, the official tree of Maine and dominant species in Acadia National Park.

It is clear that park visitors, staff and resources already are affected by ozone pollution. But, most disturbing, trends throughout the '90s show ozone levels in many parks are getting worse. This is true for nearly every eastern national park that monitors ozone, as well as western parks such as the Rocky Mountains and Grand Canyon. The majority of pollution impacting parks comes from outside park boundaries. This proposal gives too much flexibility to areas violating federal health standards.

To protect our homes and improve polluted conditions in our parks, EPA needs to implement and faithfully enforce a stronger proposal to produce timely results.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Jill Stephens was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Several people have apparently asked is there going to be a lunch break. You can take a lunch break if you wish. We are going to continue right on. We have people that need to catch planes, get back to other locations, so we will run the hearing straight through to 5:00, if necessary.

(Whereupon, there was a brief discussion off the record.)

MR. HELMS: We will go off the record now. We will convene about 11:48.

(Whereupon, a recess was taken from 11:32 a.m. to 11:48 a.m.)

MR. HELMS: Valerie True, the podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF VALERIE TRUE

MS. TRUE: Good morning. I am Valerie True, and I am with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. I came up here from Knoxville, Tennessee to be with you today.

I don't feel like I have to go into too much detail about the problem with ozone and why it is a concern, given the horrible air quality that we have had the last few days in most of the Southeast, and we have had it down in Tennessee as well. But I do want to touch on a few points that concern me about the plan and over the last few days have concerned me even more about delaying -- a plan that delays ozone reductions throughout the country, and particularly, my concern is with the Southeast.

One area that I am particularly concerned about is the provision for Early Action Compacts. We have been involved in that process in Tennessee, and I really hope that this does not get expanded to the rest of the country, because we do not find that these plans are going to bring us cleaner air anytime sooner. The localities are not prepared to make the tough decisions that it takes to truly reduce ozone pollution, and the nonattainment designation counts for something when EPA comes in and says you must do transportation conformity, you must do new source review to your industry. And local mayors, county councilmembers who get voted in by the people, if they stand up there and say oh, the large industry -- Eastman Kodak, you know, you have to reduce your pollution by a large amount, they are going to have a hard time getting reelected. So this is a serious concern that we have got, of this being expanded and having the weight being put on the localities for the program, and this is why we don't feel that this program is going to work.

We have found a lot of confusion in Tennessee, and I could go into a lot more detail of the problems that we have been having down in our area in terms of getting these programs to work. The proposals that are coming out of them are stuff like ride sharing and very fluffy stuff that will not bring clean air. We fear that the Early Action Compact will end up delaying the nonattainment designation and thereby delay getting clean air to the people in these areas.

In the Southeast, we are looking at 25 to 30 areas being put into the 8-hour ozone nonattainment area. This is up from only two places with the 1-hour. Most of these areas have opted for the Early Action Compacts, and I haven't heard much of a positive feedback from most of them.

The other concern that I have got just specifically is the flexibility or the ability to roll back to reduce the classification for areas based on the numbers crunched into a computer on projected pollution decreases and proposed pollution reduction plans. Also, through our work with the Early Action Compacts, we are definitely learning a whole lot about modeling in the way that, you know, if you model something one way, it comes out to one thing and if you model something another way -- I fear that modeling will be used in order to reduce these classifications and thereby will reduce the power of having an area classified as serious or severe and make these classifications mean virtually nothing and make it hard to have the stronger provisions of new source review put into place in these areas.

I guess those are just a couple of specific things, and I have got a couple of colleagues here who will highlight a few other main points. Those were the glaring parts to me. I just kind of wanted to -- as an overall thing, these provisions as I read through them truly will -- in the interest of flexibility, supposed flexibility, to the area, give -- will weaken the chance of these areas getting into attainment.

The reason why we have got these 8-hour ozone standards, the reason why they were put in place is because people's health was at risk. I feel like by weakening and blurring the lines, as these provisions do, that people's health is going to be at greater risk and our chance of cleanup is getting less and less and time is running out to clean up these plants.

Thank you, and I will submit written comments at a future date.

MR. HELMS: Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Valerie True was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: I have a note here, Andy Bauer and Joanna Schnurman.

MR. BAUER: Could you please just give us one minute, please?

MR. HELMS: All right. Who was the gentleman that asked me to speak? Your name again?

MR. STANTON: John Stanton.

MR. HELMS: John, come on up right now, while we are waiting.

TESTIMONY OF JOHN STANTON

MR. STANTON: Good afternoon. Thank you for soliciting public comment. We have heard a lot about the public health impacts. I thought it might be helpful and informative to talk about some of the public welfare environmental impacts.

Under the Clean Air Act NAAQS Authority, EPA can set both the primary public health standard and the secondary --

MR. SILVASI: Excuse me for one second. Would you mind just giving us your affiliation too?

MR. STANTON: Sure. My name is John Stanton. I am from the National Environmental Trust.

At any rate, under the Clean Air Act NAAQS Authority, EPA can set both the primary public health standard and the secondary public welfare or environment ozone standard. The secondary standard must protect against known and anticipated adverse environmental effects.

In 1997, EPA decided not to adopt a stricter secondary 8-hour ozone standard because it believed the primary standard would adequately protect vegetation and other environmental concerns. Because EPA refused to set a more protective secondary environment standard for ozone, it is crucial that the 8-hour primary standard be diligently implemented and enforced. Halfhearted and feeble implementation of the 8-hour ozone primary standard means that adverse environmental ozone impacts will continue far longer than necessary.

Feeble implementation of ozone standards also means unnecessary environmental damage, due to excess nitrogen oxide emissions. This is because we largely rely on the ozone standards to reduce NOx emissions that adversely affect the environment. In addition to the ozone standard, there is a NOx standard and we also rely on Title IV, but the primary driver for NOx reductions is the ozone standards.

Rigorous implementation of ozone standards is vital to NOx reductions and environmental protection. Some of the NOx loadings include acidifying surface water, reducing biodiversity and killing fish, contributing to coastal nitrification -- which is excessive nutrient enrichment which results in fish kills of shellfish and fish -- acidifying soil, depleting soil nutrients, and causing damage to forests, contributing to regional haze, contributing to forest damage and crop loss, and speeding the weathering of monuments, buildings and other stone and metal structures.

Additional specific harms due to NOx loadings include, according to U.S. EPA, two-thirds of U.S. estuaries. Approximately 84 water bodies are moderately to highly eutrophic due to nitrogen deposition. This deposition causes harmful blooms of algae, both red and brown types; depletion of dissolved oxygen, which is hypoxia, which stresses and kills marine life; loss of important habitat, such as sea grass beds and coral reefs; changes in marine biodiversity and species distribution; and then economic and social impacts due to the loss of fisheries and tourism.

Additional adverse NOx impacts include the fact that up to 40 percent of the nitrogen reaching the east and the Gulf Coast estuaries is transported and deposited via the atmosphere. Over 1,000 acid sensitive lakes and streams are still acidified, and some, particularly those along the Appalachian range, are becoming more acidic each year. NOx emissions from fossil fuel combustion for power generation alone contributes about 25 to 30 percent of atmospheric nitrogen deposition in select coastal waters and affected forests.

Ozone reduction measures should be strengthened and not weakened. According to EPA trends data, emissions of nitrogen oxides have increased 9 percent from 1982 to 2001. EPA projects that 175 million Americans will live in areas and currently live in areas that violate the new 8-hour standard. Leading nitrogen experts are calling for a 60 percent reduction in NOx emissions to reduce adverse environmental impacts, and this is the work of Dr. Gene Likens in a recent article on atmospheric environment of May 2003. EPA's proposed 8-hour implementation scheme cannot be reconciled with the congressional mandate that EPA shall -- shall adopt NAAQS that protect against known and anticipated environmental impacts of ozone and nitrogen oxides.

And then a final note on the importance of maintaining the 1-hour standard: The most recent best science on vegetation impacts reveals that 1-hour ozone peaks are especially harmful to vegetation. Because EPA refused to set a secondary welfare or environment standard for ozone and we know that 1-hour peak exposures are especially harmful to vegetation, we must keep the 1-hour standard in place. EPA's proposed 1-hour standard phaseout violates the mandate in Section 109 of the Clean Air Act that EPA shall protect against known and anticipated adverse environmental impacts from criteria air pollutants.

I just want to close by just noting that -- you know, having worked at EPA in 1996, 1997, 1998 on the standard, it is just particularly distressing to me, having spent years on this, that, you know, on the eve of actually trying to realize greater health and environmental air quality benefits, you know, we are positioned to delay everything by a minimum of five years, but probably more like ten years. Unfortunately, you know, there is a really clear pattern that is developing, and I call it the one-two punch. When you take nitrogen oxides, for instance, the NSR proposals weakened safeguards to prevent increases in nitrogen oxides. Now what we see in this proposal is an attempt to delay the day when actual reductions will have to occur in order to meet the ozone standard.

So, you know, when you weaken with one proposal and then you delay on another, it paints a pretty grim picture. I would imagine it is disheartening for the professional technical staff at EPA to have the political winds blowing in such a way that, no matter what the science says, you have got to go along with efforts to ease and delay clean air safeguards. So Somerset, you have my sympathies, but I just think it is very distressing and it is unfortunate, and we are moving in just the opposite direction that we should be.

Thank you for taking comment.

MR. HELMS: Thank you. Hold on a second.

Comments, questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

MR. STANTON: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of John Stanton was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Now let's revisit Andy Bauer and Joanna Schnurman.

TESTIMONY OF ANDY BAUER

MR. BAUER: I would like to officially -- well, my name is Andy Bauer. I am from Portland, Connecticut. My profession is a teacher, so I don't really have any, I guess, connections, although I do volunteer for Clean Water Action in Connecticut. I am really here speaking as a dad, so I would like to take a brief time-out to wish my daughter a happy birthday and get that into the official record.

I reviewed as best as I can the document the EPA has prepared for implementing the 8-hour standard, and my compliments to the authors for their long hours of preparation. I live in Portland, Connecticut. It is in Upper Middlesex County in Connecticut, and the area suffers from an air inversion.

Can you guys hold up your signs? Hold them up really high. And I have got a sign too.

Okay. This is Portland (indicating). When everybody else is having okay or bad, ours is worse. This is Portland (indicating). When things -- everybody else is having a bad or okay day, ours is worse, and when people are having a pretty good day or not so good, ours is just unhealthy.

The area that I live in suffers from an air inversion. If you think of an emission toilet bowl with no drain, that is what it is like. A program calling for compliance to regulatory flexibility, such as

Cap-and-Trade, will most likely seek to balance my county's high emissions with a county that has got low emissions, and it may be a long time before we get relief, if ever.

I have a friend, Steve Luppi. He lives up the hill from me. He is a World War II veteran, and he loves to garden. And on hot days, he can't go outside. He has got to stay inside. If I call him on the phone, I have to let the phone ring for a long time, because the phone is one room and the air-conditioner is in another room, and he has got to walk to it.

I like command and control. I am in favor of setting the bar high, and whoever can make it will make it in terms of powerplants and the rest will go do something else. And here is why: I am a veteran of the Sooty Six campaign in Connecticut, and while my previous comment may seem a little cold and cruel and heartless, being strict does work.

It took us five years to clean up the Sooty Six for sulfur dioxide. Within just a few months after the legislation had passed and the Governor had signed it into law, the owner of two of the plants, Wisvest, threw up their hands and said that's it, we quit, we are done. Within just a couple of months, those two plants were snapped up. And I mean snapped up quickly by PSE&G, the new owners, who knew the strictest standards in the country were in place for sulfur dioxide and didn't even blink about buying the plants. What's even more is that Wisvest sold them at a profit. So there are companies that know the rules and know they can get it done.

It gets even better. In Connecticut, we have set a rather aggressive climate -- no pun intended -- for what we want out of our power providers. So PSE&G then entered into negotiations through the leaders with the Connecticut Coalition for Clean Air and we talked about mercury. I know this is off the topic of ozone, but without any of the five- year struggle, without any public demonstrations, without letters to the editor, without hearings, civil conversation over about five months, we have now 90 percent reduction from a coal-fired powerplant in Connecticut. It passed the House unanimously, it passed the Senate unanimously, and Governor Rowland recently signed it. So it can be done if you set the bar high.

In summary, stricter is better. My son and daughter, my wife, my community are all positioned geographically in the path of real and documented harm. Ladies and gentlemen of the EPA, you are in a position to help us. Please do so.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Andy Bauer was concluded.)

TESTIMONY OF JOANNA SCHNURMAN

MS. SCHNURMAN: My name is Joanna Schnurman. I am from Portland, Connecticut, and I have no official affiliation. I am here as a mom.

Thank you for this opportunity to offer comments on the proposed rule to implement the 8-hour ozone standard. I have never offered comments on a document before, and the chance to exercise my democratic voice is both an honor and a humbling experience. I am not an expert; I am a wife and a mom whose family will be affected by the choices you make. It is in this context that I offer my thoughts.

While I was reading the proposal, I was struck that most of the options presented fell into one of two categories, those offering clear, unequivocal standards emphasizing control at each source and those offering flexibility to negotiate the designation and consequences received and emphasizing incentives in trade cap programs.

I am sure a state bureaucrat would prefer the more flexible options. Without fail, they make it easier for areas to reach attainment on paper or receive a lower designation. And, while I really sympathize with state and local governments struggling to meet rigorous obligations, I am more sympathetic to my family, friends and fellow citizens who struggle to breathe.

As my husband mentioned, we live in Portland, Connecticut, which is in an inversion area. Last year we had 17 days of unhealthy or worse air standards. Only a plan that addresses the local sources is going to benefit us.

I had my first asthma attack this past year. It wasn't a fun experience, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, and the thought of what a kid must go through when he has an attack is just beyond my imagination. Both my children have allergies and have already had bouts of wheezing. While I can only wonder if they will remain asthma free, I know they will stand a much better chance breathing cleaner air. My mother-
in-law and my older neighbors plan their summer days based around the projected ozone level. Sometimes they have to decide whether to brave the air for doctors appointments or buying groceries or do without.

My good friend Sarah is a single mother whose seven-year-old daughter, Aeron, has come close to death at least annually from asthma. Aeron's attacks are so severe her school requires Sarah to be accessible by phone at all times, making it nearly impossible for my friend to get a job. None of us can afford to wait to see if the modeling that predicts most nonattainment 8-hour areas will reach attainment by 2007 is accurate.

And what of the people who live in the areas that won't reach attainment? By the estimate in Table 1, that is 143 million people, half the nation's population, in 2007. In 2020, over one-third of the nation's people will still breathe polluted air.

Given the magnitude of the problem, I think the kinder, more gentle approach offered in the options, such as classifying gap areas under subsection 1, negotiating for lower designations, EAPs revoking the 1-hour standard in full and CADCs is inappropriate. I found no reason other than convenience to the states for these options. The guiding principles for this project list public health first. Flexibility is fifth. While millions of our people suffer from the effects of ozone pollution, flexibility and convenience must wait.

One of the books we read to our children to prepare them for this trip -- which is our first as a family, I should let you know -- offered the following quote by Thomas Jefferson: The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

I believe this Agency tries to the best of its ability to follow that credo. But in the maelstrom of competing interests, it can get pushed into the background. I ask that you who must decide these very important matters keep the words of Thomas Jefferson close to your hearts, and know that it is regular people like my family and me who must live with your choices.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: We appreciate you coming.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Joanna Schnurman was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Zachary Corrigan, come forward. The podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF ZACHARY CORRIGAN

MR. CORRIGAN: My name is Zachary Corrigan, and I am a staff attorney for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, or USPIRG. USPIRG is the national lobbying office of the state PIRGs, a nationwide network of state-based, nonprofit public interest advocacy organizations. I thank the EPA for allowing me to testify today on the Agency's proposal for implementing the 8-hour ozone standard.

Today in the Washington and Baltimore area,

7.6 million citizens are suffering through the fourth straight day of unhealthy air pollution and the third straight Code Red alert. We are not alone. On Wednesday, more than 33 million Americans were issued Code Red alerts, while others in 115 cities were issued Code Orange alerts. Nearly every state east of the Mississippi experienced unhealthy smog days. On Thursday we got more of the same, as nearly 30 million Americans were warned that going outside could be harmful to their health, even if they were perfectly healthy adults.

In that context, the EPA offers a proposal for implementation of the new 8-hour standard that will neither reduce smog nor protect our health. Now, more than ever, Americans deserve some summertime relief. Regrettably, the Agency's proposal reverses course, allowing weaker protections and longer delays. This can only mean that we are bound to see more smoggy summers and more asthma.

Despite passage of the Clean Air Act 30 years ago, smog or ground-level ozone still remains a problem that affects millions of Americans. According to the American Lung Association, 137 million Americans, close to half our population, live in areas where smog levels are high enough to cause serious health damage. Among other problems, ozone causes increased asthma attacks in children and emergency room hospitalizations.

I this past year found out that my nine-year-old sister, who lives in an ozone alley in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has asthma, and it is hindering her ability to play soccer. She is one of the best soccer players I have ever seen, and I am not saying that just because I am her brother, but she is an amazing soccer player. To see that athletic ability and that joy that that sport gives her diminished due to the smog levels is just absolutely unacceptable.

Six million asthma attacks each year in the eastern United States can be attributed to ozone. Recently, ozone has not only been linked to asthma attacks, but also to the onset of asthma. Asthma rates have continually gone up since 1982. In 2001, more than 20 million Americans like my sister were diagnosed as having asthma.

For decades, this country has dismally inadequate ozone protections, both because of delayed implementation and inadequate standards. EPA promulgated ozone standards in 1979, but in 1990, 11 years after the original ozone standards were issued, many areas were not in compliance, and some were a long way from it. Frustrated with the history of missed deadlines and EPA extensions, Congress addressed the failure of states to reach the ozone standards by describing the rigorous enforcement scheme in 1990. The new enforcement scheme required EPA to classify nonattainment areas based on their degree of nonattainment and establish classifications ranging from marginal to extreme, with attainment dates for each class.

For each class, areas were required to take control measures to reduce emissions and provide EPA with details on how they were going to implement these standards. It was hoped that this scheme would end the delay in delivering people to the clean air they so needed. While efforts to implement ozone protections that were better enforced or more rigorously implemented, the standard itself was found insufficient to protect public health. In 1997 after much scientific review, tens of thousands of comments -- 50,000 comments, according to the EPA -- EPA adopted a more stringent ozone standard. Unlike the previous standard, the 8-hour standard, the one -- the implementation scheme that is supposed to address this 8-hour standard took into account health problems associated with long-term exposures to lesser ozone concentrations and increased uniformity across different urban areas.

I give you this context because it is in light of these historical delays and inadequate ozone protections. The question of how the EPA now decides to implement these new 8- hour standards is vitally important for the millions of Americans who are continually exposed to ozone concentrations at dangerously high levels. Every year for the past five summers, monitors have recorded between 4,000 and 8,000 exceedences of the standard, exposing people to unhealthy levels of smog for hours at a time. According to the EPA, between 1999 and 2001 there were a total of 291 counties where the ozone levels averaged unsafe 8-hour levels. In 2000, there were

22 million people subjected to unsafe high levels of smog, and 155 counties with unsafe 8-hour levels have no existing control requirements under the old 1-hour standard.

Unfortunately, the EPA is now proposing a set of implementation options for the 8-hour standard that would lead to even more delay and ineffective controls for ozone pollutions. Some of the biggest problems with the EPA's proposal are as follows:

It would dramatically delay the time areas are required to reduce emissions to meet the ozone health standards. EPA proposes to allow all areas where ozone is at levels meeting the old, less stringent, 1-hour standard, but above the 8-hour ozone standard, to avoid the enforcement scheme Congress mandated in 1990. This will give these areas years to avoid mechanisms designed to bring them into attainment and assure people healthy, smog-free air.

For example, under this proposal, areas that fail to meet the ozone attainment deadlines are not required to be bumped up to the next higher ozone classification and subsequently implement stringent control requirements as they would under the 1990 congressionally-mandated scheme. Instead, these areas get an extra ten years of delay. That is twice the life of my sister. Twenty areas will have to begin to comply. Also, it lets powerplants and other large stationary sources of smog-forming pollutants off the hook. Under this approach, the EPA will allow weaker new source review requirements in some of our smoggiest areas.

New source review requires the oldest and dirtiest powerplants and other sources to install cleanup technologies when they make changes to increase emissions. By weakening these requirements, the Agency shifts the cost of dirty air away from the polluters and onto individuals who must pay for lost work, lost school days and hospital visits when they experience adverse health consequences of ozone.

Third, it discards the existing 1-hour standard, leaving more delay and lesser ozone protection, and this is a point that almost everybody who has come up to testify so far has brought up, so I won't go into much detail with that. But there are two ways that this is problematic.

First of all, by revoking the existing 1-hour standard, it means that many areas which, after years, still have ozone levels above the 1-hour standard are given yet another extension of time to clean up under the new standard. Further, many areas with ozone levels that peak at dangerously high levels, causing them to exceed the 1-hour standard but not exceed the 8-hour standard, will be free from implementing or keeping controls designed to minimize ozone problems. Once the 1-hour standard is revoked, areas will not have to meet the conformity requirements.

I think there are at least two other points that are in desperate need of being made, one of which has been made, which is that the EPA is offering vague computer modeling instead of real reductions. That is unacceptable. And one of the most egregious things is the use of the Early Action Compacts. I think that it is ironic that it is the Early Action Compacts, but it allows deferred ozone control requirements until 2007. And then it allows these places to not have to use NSR and conformity controls to clean up their areas. These areas aren't going to come into attainment, and there is no requirement, there is nothing that these areas will have to do outside of the existing Clean Air Act to make sure their air is clean. This simply means more delay for these areas to clean up.

I will close now by saying that in sum, EPA proposes a scheme that will undermine efforts to reduce ozone pollution. The Agency offers to turn back the clock to allow delays and ineffective ozone protections to be a continued norm, allowing more smog and, as a result, more ozone. I ask the EPA to reconsider its approach and implement it using the most stringent and health protective options available.

I thank you for allowing me to testify today, and I have my written comments here for you as well. Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Zachary Corrigan was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Jennifer Hicks. I understand you need to go as fast as possible.

MS. HICKS: Thank you very much.

MR. HELMS: The podium is yours.

MS. HICKS: Thank you.

TESTIMONY OF JENNIFER HICKS

MS. HICKS: Thank you very much for allowing me to make comments today. I am actually an anomaly today. I am actually a resident of Montgomery County, Maryland. As you well know, I live in a severe nonattainment area of ozone, and we have all experienced together our first week of the summer of severe ozone days. I would say the only benefit is that I actually got a free ride on the bus this week because of ozone alerts.

My name is Jennifer Hicks. I am a program coordinator with Chesapeake Climate Action Network. We are a new local organization, a nonprofit based in Takoma Park, Maryland, representing thousands of individuals who live in severe air quality nonattainment in the D.C. and Baltimore region. We are the first organization exclusively committed to addressing the issue of climate change in the state of Maryland, working in collaboration with citizens organizations, businesses and government leaders. We aim to make Maryland a national model for a climate-friendly economy, and it is definitely something very possible to do. We are mobilizing thousands of people around this issue, and we take it very seriously.

As a resident of an ozone alert area, we are concerned about the options EPA has published to implement the 1997 8-hour ozone standard. How this proposal is implemented will determine the quality of life of millions of people, both across the country and living in my neighborhood, including myself. The more protective

8-hour ozone smog standard was put into place primarily because it was clear that the health of children and the elderly were put at risk by ozone smog, increasing cases of lung damage and illnesses. But it is also clear that the emissions from the tailpipes and smokestacks are the cause of some of the biggest air quality problems here and worldwide.

Relaxed clean air rules and increased emissions from fossil fuel combustion jeopardizes our future by allowing business as usual in a time when we have strong evidence that human-created greenhouse gases accelerates global warming, arguably one of the largest threats facing humans today. Left unchecked, global warming could, by 2100, raise mean global temperatures 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit and raise sea levels 1 to 3 feet, ushering in an era of social, agricultural and ecological chaos on earth.

The scientific reports now indicate that trophospheric or low-level ozone is a greenhouse gas that contributes to the warming of our plant. And, in addition, because ozone is triggered by heat and as the planet warms, Code Orange and Code Red days will be exponentially increased, exponentially harming the health of both humans and the environment. It is basically a crash course for disaster if we are not directly addressing this issue.

Ozone is yet another indicator of many that's showing our country's dependence on dirty energy, and there doesn't seem to be much going in the direction of changing that. It seems as if EPA is unwilling to take a stand to protect and enforce the Clean Air Act, some of the strongest environmental legislation in our country and legislation that ensures quick and effective cleanup of dirty energy. The implementation proposal does not require areas like mine to do enough fast enough to clean up.

We don't have time to loosen compliance schedules to meet clean air standards. We can't afford to allow areas like mine to avoid new source review requirements based on an 8-hour standard. We can't afford to let industry delay clean air measures one more time. We need strong implementation of ozone standards now.

And, just on a personal note, my family is originally from Maine and we still have relatives up there. They are experiencing their first ozone alert days, and I have a grandfather that can't leave his home in the summer in Maine because of air pollution. And New England states tend to be the tailpipe of many dirty powerplants. So I am coming at this on a personal level but on a professional level, and appreciate your time today letting me speak.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Jennifer Hicks was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Pamela Irwin.

If you are wondering why we are not calling the next person like you had suggested earlier, we are jumping all the way around here as people show up and don't show up. Bear with us.

The podium is yours.

MS. IRWIN: Thank you.

TESTIMONY OF PAMELA IRWIN

MS. IRWIN: I will keep this brief, because I know that other people have said some of the things that I have to say. My name is Pamela Irwin, and I am the clean air coordinator for the Sierra Club, Virginia Chapter. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I can only hope that the concerns of everyone who is speaking here today will be taken seriously.

The Sierra Club is deeply concerned with a number of aspects of the 8-hour implementation proposal. First, we are disturbed by EPA's proposal to discard the requirements of the 1-hour standard. This will only delay progress toward the 8-hour standard, and it will continue to be detrimental to human health and the environment. It is inappropriate to simply throw away this requirement that still can have the effect of improving air quality, protecting human health and protecting our environment, including vegetation and waterways.

Second, we are very disappointed in EPA for allowing big polluters off the hook by weakening NSR requirements under the 8-hour standard. Cars have become less polluting and more efficient over the years, and it is time for big polluters to do their fair share to improve air quality.

Third, EPA's proposal to allow lower classifications and less stringent control requirements based only on highly gainable modeling demonstrations does not fulfill the Agency's obligations to ensure that areas can meet the standard. Furthermore, it is unacceptable that areas which are violating the new standard will be able to avoid congressionally-mandated control measures simply because they are not violating the 1-hour standard.

The air quality in these areas is still harmful to human health, everyone agrees. That's why we implemented this standard. And, because of that, it needs to be cleaned up now, not 20 years from now. We are also concerned, as many other people have expressed, with the Early Action Compacts that exempt nonattainment areas for measures that can improve their air quality. EPA is trading specific measures for vague voluntary programs that haven't worked in the past and won't work in the future.

Finally, we are concerned that EPA will not directly take comments of designations under the 8-hour standard. It is unacceptable that EPA is essentially refusing to listen to the public on the applicability of this rule. By only allowing the public to comment to state and local agencies, EPA is showing disdain for public opinion and concerns. EPA should listen to the voice of the public on designations, not just to highly politicize state agencies who may have other interests and agendas but have nothing to do with public health.

In closing, we do not believe that this proposal will reduce smog or improve air quality in Virginia or anywhere else. EPA should submit a proposal that will fulfill its obligations to protect the public against known and anticipated adverse impacts of air pollution instead of further delaying cleanup.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you today, and I will offer more detailed written comments by August 1st.

MR. HELMS: Thank you, ma'am.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Pamela Irwin was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Roger Diedrich, the podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF ROGER DIEDRICH

MR. DIEDRICH: Thank you. I am Roger Diedrich. I am chairman of the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club. I didn't expect to be following Pamela, but I can start by endorsing her remarks, of course.

The 15,000 members of the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club are deeply disappointed again in the Bush EPA for this proposal for implementing new weakened standards for ozone. Our members in the metro D.C. area have been fighting for progress on clean air for years, and we have been seeing a lot of foot dragging by local officials. The last thing we need is for the federal government to come along and give them a free pass to continue this derelict behavior.

The law was put in place in 1997 in response to sound scientific data. And, after several challenges by vested interests, even more substantiating data has been produced. We have been waiting for six years for EPA to implement a common sense regulation change. For the sake of some truckers' profit margin, for the sake of some power companies' market share, for the sake of some SUV drivers' macho desire to dominate the road, you will deny America's children the ability to play outside and the right of the elderly to comfortably live out their lives. What kind of cheapened value system is driving these obscene decisions? We can do better.

EPA should tighten the compliance schedules for nonattainment areas, not loosen them. Our communities need forward progress in meeting the healthier 8-hour standard. At a minimum, you should keep the 1-hour standard in place as a safety net until there is progress toward meeting the new standard. Power companies can do better by shifting more resources to cleaner sources of electricity and to stop pushing to get around the

long-established rules like new source review. The EPA should not condone it when they try and also do not give in to stated plans of the freight industry, the rollback, the diesel rule.

EPA needs to do a better job of eliminating loopholes in the analysis and modeling methods for assigning classifications. Some of this may involve additional spending for research for positive incentive programs or for public transportation infrastructure. We just saw the approval of a new $29 billion Department of Homeland Security, largely in response to the loss of about 3,000 innocent lives. What is the proper response to address the tens of thousands of early deaths every year from filthy, toxic air?

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Roger Diedrich was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Jason Babbie, the podium is yours.

MR. BABBIE: Thank you.

TESTIMONY OF JASON BABBIE

MR. BABBIE: Hello. My name is Jason K. Babbie. I am an environmental policy analyst for the New York Public Interest Research Group, NYPIRG, the nation's largest statewide environmental protection consumer rights and government reform advocacy organization. I first would like to thank the EPA for giving me the opportunity to testify on the Agency's options for implementing the 1997 8-hour ozone standard. I sincerely hope today's hearing and the other hearings lead the Agency to a standard with compliance mechanisms that are adequate to protect public health.

I am here today because New York State has a serious air quality problem, which is another more sterile way of saying people are breathing unhealthy air and getting sick all across the state. NYPIRG has offices from Buffalo to Long Island and, while Buffalo may not look a lot like Long Island or have a lot in common with Long Island, they do have poor air quality in common, as do many places in between. In fact, according to EPA's website, the capitol district, New York City, which includes Long Island and the northern suburbs, Poughkeepsie and Buffalo all have counties in nonattainment.

Just last year alone, counties in the following places topped EPA's 8-hour limit for ozone: 35 times in the New York metro area; 34 times in Buffalo; 16 times in the Adirondacks; 15 times in the capitol district; 13 times in Rochester and 8 times in Syracuse. It is counterintuitive for an area such as the Adirondacks to have unhealthy air to breathe, let alone air at one of the highest peaks of the Adirondacks. But numerous times last summer that was the case. because of weak standards and pollution trading. What is worse is that the poor air quality appears to be getting worse in New York and spreading. Unfortunately, many of the options presented in the 1997 8-hour standard will further exacerbate this problem.

New York's pervasive air quality problems have very real consequences. Using EPA-approved methodology, over 510,000 asthma attacks and over 12,000 emergency room visits during the summer of 1997 are attributable to ozone smog. The latest research shows that growing up in an area with elevated ozone concentrations may actually cause the disease asthma. This is demonstrated by specific examples in New York City. The South Bronx has one of the nation's highest and worst asthma rates in a recent study reported by The New York Times on findings of a similar trend in central Harlem. How many days and how many places is the EPA going to accept advising asthmatics and children not to play outside while sending people reaching for inhalers or, even worse, heading to the hospital?

In addition to the obvious public health problems and emotional toll that goes along with an asthma attack or watching a loved one go through an asthma attack, there are very real economic impacts as well. There are the costs of health care, which affect lower income communities much more than others. Asthma is also the number one reason for chronic school absenteeism in New York, hindering a child's ability and his future. Many times adults also miss work to care for their asthmatic child or for their own difficulty with asthma, impacting a family's income.

The regulatory consequences of not meeting attainment are important, because it is these mechanisms that create the structure to clean up the air. Unfortunately, some of the options the EPA has put forward will exacerbate New York's current problems. One -- and I won't go into too much detail, because you have heard a lot of them today, and I will be submitting more specific written comments. But erasing the compliance necessary for the 1-hour standard or to then later meet the 8-hour standard will honestly just mean more asthma attacks and more hospital room visits for New Yorkers. I know it is unacceptable to seniors, children and their parents and asthmatics in New York, and hope that is unacceptable to EPA as well.

Letting major stationary polluters such as powerplants off the hook from existing new source review requirements means making New York's residents pay more money. New Yorkers will be paying more in taxes to cover Medicaid and Medicare costs and for more of their own personal income because of their own health care costs. Passing along costs to those that can afford it least is exactly what the EPA should be avoiding.

Third, giving modeling enough credit to lower an area's classification ignores the fact that people will still be breathing unhealthy air. The simple fact is that modeling does not provide respiratory relief.

In closing, I would like to reiterate the importance of having breathable air and how that is directly linked to EPA's 8-hour standard and the mechanisms for meeting that standard. In making your final decision, I implore you to keep in mind that which is truly important. I definitely have had people that I supervise that have not been able to come into work because their four-year-old daughter had to go to the hospital numerous times because of asthma. My roommate, who is fit and in his 20s, has to reach for the asthma inhaler at the top of our fourth floor walkup on hot summer days like this. New York City could turn off all of its pollution sources and would never be in attainment if we don't have a strong national standard, so I implore you to do so.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Jason Babbie was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: In an attempt to accommodate Nat Mund - - you have to leave at 1:00 -- come forward, and we will move you forward.

MR. MUND: Thank you.

MR. HELMS: The podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF NATHANIEL MUND

MR. MUND: My name is Nat Mund. I am a Washington representative with the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club has over 700,000 members across the country. It is one of the oldest conservation organizations here. We are going to be submitting more specific written comments. I am just going to make oral comments at this time. I am not going to go over the ground that a lot of people have already tread. I just want to try to underscore a few things and then add a personal note to this.

Something that actually I -- and I have been in and out of the hearing -- I haven't heard underscored yet is a concern about the process that brought us here today, the fact that the rule package that was published in the Federal Register is a set of options and is not actually

-- it doesn't contain regulatory language. We are concerned that this absence of regulatory language is going to lead to a less perfect public process. I mean, the more specific the actual language is, the more specific our comments could be to help inform your decision making.

I don't want this to be interpreted in any way as a call for delay. We share the Agency's concern that a rule needs to be implemented soon and strongly, but we had hoped that a rule would be -- actual rule language would be available and hope that the Agency could provide it before the end of the public comment period so that more specific comments could be made.

I also want to just again generally underscore a few items. The move from -- or at least the options that indicate a move from the more proscriptive, the more controlling, Subpart 2 into Subpart 1, we think this ignores some of the lessons that we have learned over the last 33 years as we have dealt with clean air issues, that the Clean Air Act, when originally passed in 1970, had a goal of cleaning up the air by 1975. But it was merely -- we were unable to achieve that.

In fact, until 1990 and the Clean Air Act amendments, we had a lot of difficulty in achieving clean air from smog in many communities around the company. We have made substantial progress since then in several areas. We have a lot more to go, but we believe that moving away from the more proscriptive ideas that actually make those tough political decisions that Congress made, that that's an important thing that we should hold onto, and that we shouldn't leave that and go back to something that we have already had some experience with and understand that it is not as effective.

Sort of also related to that is the incentive program which focuses on modeling and allowing communities to model their way out of a nonattainment designation or to a lower level of nonattainment designation. We are concerned that that encourages communities to spend resources on modeling emissions reductions rather than spending resources on achieving emissions reductions. You know, to the extent that -- I mean, there are limited resources. We know that we are in a difficult economic time. We need those resources to get protections for air quality. And we have heard today voluminous reports of the air quality impacts of ozone.

Actually, that is what I would like to speak on, if I may speak a portion of my testimony as an individual, as a citizen, rather than as a representative of the Sierra Club. My wife has asthma, and thankfully, it is well controlled now. But that hasn't always been the case. And I assume that for people that don't have access to medical care, that remains the case today.

In May of 1997, we were whitewater rafting on the Chatuga River, which is probably best known as the set for Deliverance. It is a wild and scenic river, so it is sort of out in the middle of nowhere, but it is, unfortunately -- and we didn't really realize this at the time. It is downwind from Atlanta and also downwind from a series of powerplants owned by Southern Company and the Tennessee Valley Authority. We were on the river for several hours during that day and managed to -- we weren't married at the time, but we did get married later, which, for anybody who has actually run a two- person raft, I think it is quite an achievement for us.

Suzanne was having some difficulty during the trip, and she had her rescue inhaler with her and used it during the day. We were staying with friends at a cabin outside Franklin, North Carolina, up in the -- we were right up at the top of the mountains, which -- we didn't know at that time, but in that area of the country, at high altitude, you have severe ozone problems. It had been a very hot day, and Suzanne's difficulty breathing didn't get any better. And by about 11:00 at night, it became evident that it wasn't going to get any better without significant intervention, and we had to go hurtling through those two-lane roads in the gullies about 20 minutes to get to a hospital, where she could -- where they gave her a medication so that she could breathe.

That is one of the most horrifying memories of my life, is sitting there at 11:00 at night, dark country road, hurtling at unsafe speeds to get her there with her wheezing. And the pain and the fear, that is something that we can do something about, and we should. So that is why I believe that we need to have a very strong rule here.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

MR. HELMS: Thank you so much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Nathaniel Mund was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: I have two individuals that want to be called together, Stephen Smith and Ulla Reeves.

MS. REEVES: No.

MR. SMITH: We don't need to be called together.

MR. HELMS: I stand corrected. We have two individuals that want to speak, but they don't want to be called together.

Stephen Smith has the podium. He will be followed by Ulla Reeves.

MR. SMITH: Thank you very much.

MR. HELMS: The podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN SMITH

MR. SMITH: My name is Stephen Smith. I am the executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a veterinarian by training. I live in Knoxville -- and that is spelled K-N-O-X, not just N-O-X, even though the air quality there is quite severe -- and we continue to struggle in East Tennessee with bad air. Our organization does work throughout the Southeast United States. As many of you know, there are a number of areas in the Southeast that continue to struggle with the burden of poor air quality, which is unhealthy both for humans and nonhumans, and is extracting an environmental toll.

I live in the shadows of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, although unfortunately, because of the bad air quality, even though I may only be 30 vertical miles from some of the highest elevations in the eastern United States, I can't see the mountains because of the air pollution, regional haze and other things. So we have got a very serious problem.

I am a father. My oldest son has experienced asthma, and as a parent, it is one of the most frightening things that you can experience. I am an employer, and I have a number of people that work for me and have employees that have children that suffer from severe asthma and have employees themselves that sometimes are unable to come to work or come to work compromised because of the poor air quality.

So this is not an abstract concept. It is not something that is just sort of pushed around in bureaucratic circles. It has true human health implications, it has true environmental implications, and we need to move forward to implement a very strong rule to get us clean air. The promise of clean air continues to remain elusive.

In a very real way, it is like approaching a finishing line in a race and then, all of a sudden, the judge or the people that are -- the regulatory people, sort of, in the race begin to move the finishing line back so that you never actually get the race finished. And I think we are in a race for clean air, and we need EPA to hold firm the line for healthy air and for attainment throughout the country. We need healthy air.

To be honest with you, I am a little confused about this whole process, because I guess at this point we don't really have a proposed rule. We have -- I think the terminology I will use is we have a framework. It is a little uncertain when this framework is actually going to be given to us in a form that is in the proposed rule.

We participated with a number of other groups in the environmental community to try to challenge through legal means to get EPA to hold firm, and we remain frustrated by the fact that it seems like every time we turn around we are dealing with a regulatory agency that is vested with the guy that is to protect human health who seems to be moving the bar.

In that context, I want to make just a few comments on the aspects of the proposal that I understand. First of all, we need very strong anti-backsliding provisions. It is of great concern that as you move from a 1-hour standard to the 8-hour standard that we do not want to see progress that is being made or should be being made around the 1-hour standard to somehow or another slip. If I understand correctly, the whole purpose of the 8-hour is to give a more protective standard to the country because science has clearly demonstrated that exposure to ozone is dangerous to human health. As a veterinarian, we used to use ozone to purify surgical instruments. Ozone is used to purify water. And we need to get the levels reduced in the atmosphere so that we have healthy air to breathe.

Now, it would be sadly ironic that in the process of moving to a more healthy standard and moving from the 1- hour standard to the 8-hour standard that somehow or another, we slipped or allowed to backslide the necessary push within the regulatory community to get local governments and get various industries and others who are contributing, including individuals who drive their automobiles, to all of a sudden see that start to backslide. So I think that it is absolutely imperative that there is no way that in the transition from the

1-hour standard to the 8-hour standard that we see any backsliding.

We should also be extremely careful that the term flexibility doesn't become synonymous with delay. While flexibility is conceptually a good thing, if it is being used to manipulate the rules in order to allow delay to become a code word -- flexibility to become a code word for delay. So you have all the folks that are being regulated out there saying well, we need greater flexibility, when in reality what they are saying is that we need you to continue to delay the standard because we don't want to be held accountable and we don't want to make the investments, we don't want to generate the political will so that we actually achieve what we are trying to do here, which is healthy air. So I am concerned that you read through this flexibility and some people are saying delay, and I think it is critical that that not happen. We do not need delay.

We are active in the process of looking at the Early Action Compacts in our region. We are skeptical. We are not sure that they are going to achieve what they need to do. But we do know one thing, that the threat of nonattainment -- it was characterized in an article this past weekend as the scarlet letter for many of these communities -- is a powerful hammer, a powerful motivating tool. And if you continue to sort of pull that back, when we get some of these communities moving towards trying to take the actions to move forward to develop the political will to actually implement measures that are going to reduce air pollution, you don't want to pull that back.

A couple of other very quick things. We do not support modeling reclassification. Clearly, we need to be looking at the tons in the air, we need to be looking at the actual what the environment sees, what my lung tissue sees. And it is not what is on a computer screen through modeling, it is actually what I breathe, what I am exposed to in the atmosphere. So using modeling to achieve some measure of weakening the standard or reclassification to lower levels of the designated areas in the rule is unacceptable. You should go by what we are seeing in the atmosphere.

So with those things, again, I would just implore upon you, please do not weaken what we are doing. We are close. We are making progress. Let's see it through. Let's not use flexibility as a code word for delay.

Thank you very much.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you, Dr. Smith.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Stephen Smith was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: The podium is yours by yourself.

MS. REEVES: Thank you very much.

TESTIMONY OF ULLA REEVES

MS. REEVES: Good afternoon. My name is Ulla Reeves. I am also with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. I am the regional air director. I am going to say everything that you have already heard before, and I am going to say it again.

First of all, I would like to say that the air outside is really gross, and I am having a hard time breathing today. I think Code Red days, I think Code Orange days and especially Code Purple days are unacceptable. We have unacceptable air quality outside.

We have the means and the know-how to clean up the air. We have the technology available. We know how to do this. So my question to EPA is why are we proposing extensions of time and leniency to those responsible for polluting our air?

In the Southeast where we live, as Steve and Valerie and other people have mentioned, there are approximately 23 million people living in areas with unhealthy levels of ozone. In our 8 states of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, there are 9 cities and counties violating our clean air standards. And that is just the counties with the monitors in it; that is not reflective of the counties that don't have the monitors.

So, again, why are we proposing increased flexibility to solve these problems? I thought hard for a while for an analogy about this issue of changing designations based on modeling. We don't let our children move up to fifth grade without passing fourth grade, so why would we let Atlanta, with a severe nonattainment classification, move to a lesser classification without actually meeting the requirements to get them there?

We are very concerned about this EPA proposal allowing changes in designation based on arbitrary future hopeful projections. In the states across the Southeast, we can't wait for clean air. We can't breathe when we are having Code Red, Code Orange and Code Purple days. Allowing areas lesser classification means more pollution for more time, and that is simply wrong.

Valerie mentioned our concern about the Early Action Compacts, and I would like to reiterate this. The Early Action Compacts would essentially allow for extensive delays in actually achieving clean air. Early Action Compacts are technically illegal and allow areas with serious air quality problems to avoid the tried and true programs of the Clean Air Act.

Another concern that I would like to highlight is that EPA is holding these hearings without offering a formal proposal for the public to review and understand before giving comment. It is incredibly difficult for the general public to formulate comments without knowing what EPA is planning on writing in the actual rule. I would like to request that EPA issue the proposed rule before August 1st of 2003 so that we have time to comment on this and actually see what is going to be written.

Furthermore, it is critical that we retain the April 15, 2004 deadline for nonattainment designation and not let that slip. EPA does not have to finalize this rule in order to make the nonattainment designations, and we would like to ensure that those designations are made in advance of the rule being finalized.

The bottom line is that both through the process and the details of this preamble, we are facing potential delays for clean air, and that is unacceptable. Let's ensure that as we transition areas from the old standard to the new, that we not lose sight of our goal that is real and attainable, clean air. In this proposal, EPA seems to be favoring greater flexibility, longer timelines and vague rules that are essentially loopholes for nonattainment and will prolong getting us into attainment indefinitely.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Ulla Reeves was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: What I would like to do is exercise the prerogative of the chair here to take a ten-minute break. We will convene back at 13 after 1:00.

I have been prompted by our legal assistant here, who would like a 15-minute break. Being one not to argue with our Office of General Counsel, we'll take a

15-minute break.

(Whereupon, a recess was taken from 1:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.)

MR. HELMS: Let's reconvene the hearing.

TESTIMONY OF RONALD L. BERT, (via e-mail)

MR. HELMS: I would like to read into the record an e-mail that I got here from Ronald L. Bert of Falls Church, Virginia. He comments:

Like many of the concerned public, I cannot attend this hearing as it conflicts with my work schedule, specifically doing my full-time job. Therefore, I am voicing my objection through you -- me as the hearing officer reading it into the record -- about the appalling attempt to roll back the ozone standards. I agree with and would like the reading of the detailed part below at the hearing and/or submission of this e-mail below to the hearing.

The detailed part that I will read in his behalf as hearing officer:

Right now, 140 million Americans, more than half of our population, live in areas where ozone-forming smog levels are high enough to cause serious health problems. Unfortunately, the rule that is being proposed will delay and loosen clean air requirements in those areas where it is literally unsafe to breathe. This would mean more smog and higher instances of asthma and other respiratory ailments for children and others in that population that exist living in these areas. For more information, please visit -- and it gives a website, and I will not read through that. I wouldn't make it through without messing it up, but it will be in the record.

Thank you for your time and dedication to help enhance and protect our national parks for present and future generations. The NPCA Grassroots Staff. National ParkLines is a publication of the National Parks Conservation Association's Park Action Network.

So I will give this to the court reporter as part of the record.

Our next presenter, Brooke Suter. The podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF BROOKE SUTER

MS. SUTER: Good afternoon. I would first like to thank you very much for your stamina here at these EPA hearings. I know that they are long days, and I know that everyone works very hard on these issues. It is so important that the public has the opportunity to comment.

I am the Connecticut director for Clean Water Action and the Clean Water Fund. My primary reason for being here today, however, is as the lead coordinator for the Connecticut Coalition for Clean Air. I agree with all the comments that have been said here today. There has been some tremendous compelling testimony.

I came here today from Connecticut with Dr. Mark Mitchell, who went over some of the medical information, with Andy Bauer and Joanna and Aiden and Holly, that family from Portland who outlined some other issues, and with Stephanie Sanchez, from the Norwalk area. And those are just a few of the people from a coalition that includes over 130 organizations, over half a million Connecticut residents.

What is significant about that is when you think of the fact that the state only has 3.2 million people in it, half a million of them are willing to say specifically that they are concerned about this issue and are willing to take action. I think that says a lot.

What I thought I would add to that group effort is to explain a little bit how broad the Coalition is and the broad-based support for this. I think often, sort of the usual suspects come forward. You might have some public health advocates. You might have some environmental groups. But what you should know about the Connecticut Coalition for Clean Air is that those members include health organizations like the American Lung Association of Connecticut and more conservative groups like the Greater Bridgeport Medical Association. These were not -- there is a long process that one has to go through to get these kinds of people on board with these sorts of issues.

It also includes faith communities, the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, the Committee on the Environment, the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut are a couple. There are 130 groups -- I won't read all of them -- public interest groups like the Connecticut Citizen Action Group and the Connecticut Public Interest Research Group. So those are some -- those are more usual suspects.

But then you have, for instance, the teachers, the Fairfield Education Association, understanding how significant asthma attacks and high ozone days are for the loss of school days for teachers, loss of workdays, and for the future of our children and their ability to be effective members of society and get an education by being able to attend school and not be in the emergency room. There are political organizations like the League of Women Voters of Connecticut and then other environmental organizations like Clean Water Action or Toxics Action Center and NCR Club of Connecticut. There are groups that are concerned about these issues. There are not just a few concerned people that are impacted.

I am sure you all are incredibly aware after the compelling testimony today of how many people from across the country have very severe and direct impacts from high ozone, and I need to convey to you that these people and this coalition of people don't understand delay. It is simply unacceptable to delay any further. Six years to get the rule moving is one thing, but to delay beyond this point is something that, frankly, as their organizing leader, I wouldn't be able to explain to them. They look at me and say you must be kidding; they have to do something now; my child is in the emergency room today.

I guess the underscoring point is that this is all preventable, and I would say we need to prevent it. Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much for taking the time to come down.

(Whereupon the testimony of Brooke Suter was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Amy Beck. Amy, you have been waiting very patiently. The podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF AMY BECK

MS. BECK: I am Amy Beck, and I am not with any organization. I am a student at ETSU in Johnson City, Tennessee. And I am like one of the citizens that she was talking about who doesn't understand, doesn't understand why, when we have the technology and the science to protect our environment and to protect our health, why it is getting pushed back and why it is not fixed now.

I just last month watched a friend die. His lungs shut down and filled with fluid, and I watched him take his last breath. Nobody should have to go through that. You all have the power to prevent some of that from happening, and I hope that you will do that, because our lives are in your hands, and we are trusting you.

I came because I want to just remind you and to let you all know that even if some of us don't know a lot of the science about this -- and I don't know a lot about politics -- I am trusting you all to make the right decisions and to protect my life and my health and my family's health.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you. Thank you for coming all the way from Johnson City.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Amy Beck was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Lee Epstein, the podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF LEE EPSTEIN

MR. EPSTEIN: Thank you, Mr. Hearing Officer. I didn't come all the way from Tennessee, but I did walk 13 long, hot blocks from the Metro.

My name is Lee Epstein. I am the director of the lands program at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which is a regional environmental organization here in the

Mid-Atlantic. We have about 110,000 members, mostly in the states of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, but actually across the country. Thank you for the opportunity to present this brief testimony on EPA's proposed implementation plan.

In our view, most of the implications for the Agency's preferred plan of action are substantially negative for human health, the environment and, in our case, the Chesapeake Bay, which is already hugely stressed by nitrogen pollution. The implementation proposal should largely be rejected, at least with respect to the matters I mention below.

Timely attainment of national ambient air quality standards is, first and foremost, an objective in law already past due, but it is also too dear to the 291 counties estimated to be in violation to leave to chance or near impossibility in the short term, as these various proposals would do. The new 8-hour standards are intended to obtain significant seasonal reductions in ozone, important for restoring the health of the Chesapeake Bay, which actually would be restored even quicker with year-round reductions. But the current proposals would unduly delay and actually jeopardize full implementation to reach those goals in a timely manner.

There are several problems with the proposals. First, many areas that would otherwise be classified as moderate for nonattainment under the Clean Air Act's public health standards based on the new 8-hour values -- thus making them subject to local controls on industry and vehicle emissions -- could be exempted here from such control because they are, quote, expected, end quote, to attain the standards by 2007 anyway.

Additionally, nonattainment areas could be placed in a less demanding designation by using analytic models to show that they will attain their standard within three years and by showing the influence of out-of-area air pollution sources. This is the case even though such analyses are often notoriously weak, as are many of the incentives and local voluntary programs that are currently in place and that are used reportedly to arrive at air quality attainment.

Second, transportation conformity, the major Clean Air Act program that requires regional transportation plans be within the vehicle emission limits established in state implementation plans, would be wrongly transformed. This essential accountability program, strengthened in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments precisely because of the substantial influence of transportation emissions and ozone, would be seriously weakened by this proposal.

Along these lines, the proposal would permit regions to ignore or reject adopted emissions budgets and so- called reasonable further progress targets that are derived from the 1-hour standard as well as the air quality standard bump up to a higher standard that has occurred in certain nonattainment areas.

Honest conformity and its rigorous tests and analyses would no longer apply, and the transportation plan would no longer need to conform to the pollution limits of the currently accepted and the currently adopted 1-hour ozone motor vehicle emissions budget once a new

8-hour designation is put in place, even though the

8-hour SIPs, the 8-hour state implementation plans, would not be due for at least another two years.

Instead, a nonattainment area could use the old and discredited build/no build conformity test to measure projects until the new standard's emission budgets and plan are formulated a couple of years hence. Thus, traffic growth and pollution increases to continue during this time, though the increased emissions would continue to adversely affect human health and the environment.

Indeed, just by virtue of coming under the

8-hour standard's protective umbrella, the requirement for an April 2005 adoption of more stringent pollution controls if an area fails to attain more healthful air quality under the 1-
hour standard would be abandoned. Finally, for areas that recently failed to meet but now need to maintain their achievement of the standards, conformity reviews would no longer be required, eliminating necessary ongoing monitoring.

For human health, the implications are serious, especially vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly and those with compromised respiratory systems that number in the hundreds of thousands in some nonattainment areas would continue to suffer. For transportation systems and facilities, major projects will proceed that can result in substantial sprawl and further air quality degradation without the kind of analysis necessary to determine the degree of adverse impact and without the strong standards against which such proposal should be measured.

For already stressed environmental systems such as the Chesapeake Bay, NOx problems -- nitrogen oxide problems -- originating within the many nonattainment areas within our watershed will continue to worsen, leading to higher nitrogen loadings instead of lower ones and delayed or ultimately denied necessary improvements.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thanks again.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Lee Epstein was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Melissa Bernardin, the podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF MELISSA BERNARDIN

MS. BERNARDIN: Melissa Bernardin, Clean Water Action, 163 Court Street, Portsmouth, New Hampshire 03801. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Melissa Bernardin. I am here on behalf of the 3,000 members of New Hampshire Clean Water Action.

We have heard overwhelming public opinion today that current unhealthy air quality in our nation is an unacceptable threat that we must deal with swiftly and without leniency. Coming from the Live Free or Die State, I would add that it is unacceptable for the federal government to allow our air to get so dirty that people must be advised to stay indoors on certain days as prisoners, more or less, in our own homes.

Taking it to the regional level, when you live in New England, where warm weather comes around just three to four months per year, being advised to stay indoors for even one summer day, separate from being worrisome for asthmatic families, is downright disappointing. Surely you can appreciate how enjoyable the sun is after winters such as the last, where the north country of our state was dealt Arctic blasts as chilling as 80 degrees below Fahrenheit with wind chill, not to mention how our summer tourism revenues may suffer from advisories to stay indoors.

In New Hampshire in 2002, approximately one day out of every two summer weeks were unhealthy air days, and we have already had at least one unhealthy ozone designated day in New Hampshire this year, 2003. EPA's published set of quote/unquote options for implementing the 1997 8-hour ozone standard would weaken clean air protections for our country. Failure to reign in nitrogen pollution in the U.S. will allow further harm to New Hampshire's natural environment, as our state is located downwind of the East Coast's most smoggy areas.

Now I want to focus for just a couple minutes on the ecosystem impacts that will persist should EPA choose a path forward that allows standards for ozone compliance to be weakened. Much of this testimony draws on the recent nitrogen publication and bioscience paper prepared by the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation's Science Links project, work that was undertaken to advance a scientific policy and public understanding of nitrogen pollution. Because it is field season, scientists associated with this study were not available to attend this hearing, but they will be submitting written comments.

Nitrogen pollution from fossil fuel combustion is linked to several major environmental issues, number one, acid rain. Nitrogen oxides from fossil fuel combustion contribute to the formation of acid rain. Unlike sulfur dioxide, emissions of nitrogen oxides have not declined over the past decade. The well-documented impacts of acid rain include acidification of many lakes and streams, such that they are too acidic to support fish life, depletion of essential basic nutrients, such as calcium from soils, reduction in colder stress tolerance in some tree species, including red spruce and sugar maple.

Two, ground-level ozone. Nitrogen oxides contribute to the formation of trophospheric ozone, which damages plant tissue, thus resulting in reductions in forest growth and crop yield.

Three, nitrogen saturation in forests. Nitrogen deposition can overfertilize forests. Excessive inputs over a long period of time, such as has occurred in the many parts of the eastern U.S., reduce tree vigor and allow nitrogen to leak from soils into surface waters, thus exacerbating acidic conditions.

And four, nitrification of coastal waters. The nitrogen that enters rivers flows downstream to coastal waters, where it can cause nitrification or overenrichments. Symptoms include algoblooms, low oxygen events, fish kills, loss of sea grasses and loss of aquatic life. Nitrification of coastal waters is one of the most widespread water quality problems in the U.S. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has identified 42 major estuaries in the nation that have been nitrified as a result of overenrichment related to nitrogen pollution.

The last point that I would like to make: In a study published last month in Atmospheric Environment,

Dr. Gene Likens -- this was mentioned earlier today -- and his coauthors offer strong evidence that controls on NOx emissions from fossil fuel combustion are essential to reduce rainfall acidity, ground-level ozone, nitrogen deposition and coastal pollution. The article shows that, unlike sulfur, where there is almost a one-to-one relationship between emissions and deposition, that the NOx emission deposition ratio requires a deeper NOx emissions reduction. This means a 50 percent reduction in deposition could require a 60 percent reduction in emissions. Given that instead NOx emissions have remained unchanged for over a decade, it is critical now to support actions that result in meaningful cuts.

Weakening the clean air protections by extending deadlines and allowing control measures that are unlikely to bring areas into ozone compliance is a step in the wrong direction. Many of our nation's ecosystems will shoulder the burden of such a decision. There is an opportunity to require reductions that will benefit our forests, lakes, stream and coastal waters. Such an opportunity should not be missed.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Melissa Bernardin was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Now, is anyone here on a very tight time frame?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Okay. Seeing no hands raised, we will go through the list here.

Julie Crenshaw, come forward. The podium is yours. Be sure to give us your name, affiliation and so forth, Ms. Crenshaw.

TESTIMONY OF JULIE CRENSHAW

MS. CRENSHAW: Good afternoon. I am Julie Crenshaw. I am the chair of the Air Quality Public Advisory Committee at the Council of Governments. I am also a citizen here in Alexandria. Today I am not speaking for the committee, but I think it is important that you understand that I am affiliated with that group. I have been there for ten years. This is my third year as chair.

Many of the things that I have seen in the last ten years and the people I have spoken with have been represented here today. Mr. Helms, I am glad you are from North Carolina. The man who owns Grandfather Mountain once said to me in the last decade -- he said please, I want my trees to stop dying. And it was because of the air quality.

The North Carolina State University has done some very good research into effects of air quality on tree development, and many of the tests that they have done have shown conclusively that air quality stunted the growth and the normal development of trees that were growing, and one of them was a seedling -- were seedlings from Grandfather Mountain.

The people who sit on my committee represent a lot of different areas in this particular region, from business to environment to health to general citizens. Many of the concerns that we have as the public do not always carry over to the political will and the political information that is submitted to EPA. Many of the things that the public would like to see happen, the politicians who will send you state implementation plans, they are not as stringent as what the public would like to see, because of the political will, because of the fact that they want to be reelected.

And it is not that people don't care. Mirant has a seat on my committee, and the fellow who represents Mirant, which we have one of the powerplants down here on the Potomac River, it is grandfathered, although I have never understood the term grandfathered, because no grandfather would want something that pollutes for his children, his grandchildren, et cetera.

They had had problems with the regulations for EPA specifically under the new source review. There is confusion. There is some things that they would like to do, but they don't have the permission to do some of the things that would clean up their plants. Now, this is not necessarily their grandfathered plants. But there seems to be some confusion about what they can do that would be beneficial in implementing improvements that they say would clean the air. I don't know what needs to happen, but I feel like this gentleman is being very honest with me.

As well, the people who live near this Mirant plant down on the water, the coal that they stack up to fuel their plant is not covered. So these people can't open their windows because they get coal dust in the windows. I mean, this is aside from what comes out of the smokestacks. If Alexandria had their way, they would tell them to leave. They don't want the plant here, but they don't have the wherewithal to say we don't want that. There needs to be some local control about what happens in an area related to air quality, and that isn't here, and we need that.

This area has had 50 plus days of rain up until this particular week, Code Green all across the board. All of a sudden, once the Code Green went away and we got 90 degree weather, we are Code Red and Code Purple. This tells me that we have a crisis. I don't know whether this air is coming down from Baltimore or whether it is coming from the Ohio Valley. That's the way our airshed is. But if that is not the case, then the problem is here. If we could get the Ohio Valley to clean up their air, we wouldn't have to deal with it in this location.

There has to be more localized responsibility, and it can't be voluntary. There are people and there are companies who do everything that they possibly can, but that is not the norm. And until the norm is such that people take responsibility, we have to have the regulation, and people want the regulation. People are asking why are we having to go through this severe situation and why wasn't something done to start with.

Sometimes the research that is done at the local level to determine what the situation is, given that we had to go back ten years to look at the data to determine what was happening for a severe status -- which is what we are going to be bumped up to -- it is very tedious. A lot of the time they were calling EPA for guidance constantly.

I don't know what the give and take was there, but at the last Metropolitan Washington Air Quality Committee, where we were looking at putting out the state implementation plan for public comment, nobody from EPA was there. And it is crucial that at every one of these MWAQC meetings we have someone from EPA there. Sometimes we have questions, sometimes we don't, but that was really critical, because given we were at that point putting out the state implementation plan for public comment, there were some questions that I think would have been asked of EPA before this was done.

So we need more localized ability to deal with things, and if every jurisdiction did something at the local level, we wouldn't get the downwind from Ohio or the downwind from Baltimore or they wouldn't get wind that comes from us, which is not usually the norm. We would have better ability to deal with this, and it would straighten out the national problem.

Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you. Thanks for taking the time to come in.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Julie Crenshaw was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Robert Dalton, the podium is yours.

(Whereupon, there was a brief discussion off the record.)

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT DALTON

MR. DALTON: Thank you. It is good to see a lot of southerners here. I know I moved down from New Jersey to South Carolina. The air quality was a lot cleaner and, 16 years later, there is a great deterioration in the air quality. My talk will be a little bit -- probably different than most of the talks today, but it will focus on, probably, the same issues.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and members of the U.S. EPA. My name is Robert Dalton. I am vice president of business development and government affairs for ESTEC Enterprises. I am a member of South Carolina's staff advisory committee for the Early Action Compact for Greenville, Spartanburg and Anderson Counties. I am a staunch supporter of a clean and healthy environment through free enterprise. I am an ultraconservative and a free trader that is not aligned with any political party.

ESTEC Enterprises bases its principles on free trade. I have previously participated in the U.S. EPA's public comment, and I have attended meetings concerning innovative initiatives for the print industry and inaugural and subsequent meetings for the U.S. EPA Common Sense Initiative dating back to 1994, and I have attended clean coal events sponsored by the Department of Energy.

My public comment will end with an explanation of why Ms. Diane Eldridge walked out of the last staff advisory committee meeting for the Early Action Compact very upset. Ms. Eldridge is the associate director of Upstate Forever, a South Carolina organization concerned about social issues affecting the future of South Carolina. My comment will begin with addressing the

8-hour ozone implementation rule, addressing the areas in this proposal that would automatically trigger a federal lawsuit against the U.S. EPA and comments on my position. Further written statements will be sent to the U.S. EPA prior to the deadline for public comment.

First, there exists no difference in the capabilities of technology, cost of technology and the ability of the general public to be expeditiously as practical in reducing ozone precursors to meet the 1-hour and 8-hour standards. Therefore, the extension of time provided by this proposed implementation standard is unwarranted. The capabilities of technologies and the costs of technologies to meet attainment of the 8-hour standard by the time frame of the 1-hour standard is only limited to the desire of the Bush Administration to reduce the deaths, asthma attacks and the associated medical costs and health problems of the general public that is associated with ground-level ozone. The ozone standard has changed, but the technology remains the same, is more readily available and cheaper than it was ten years ago. I am willing to testify to Congress on these topics.

In the will and efforts to reduce ozone precursors that protect the general health and welfare of the public by the federal government, both the legislative and executive branches over the last 30 years have been negligent in their duties to the general public. This negligence appears to continue with this proposal. While the Supreme Court has remanded the implementation of the 8-hour ozone standard to the U.S. EPA for obvious reasons, there exists no evidence that the intent of the expeditiously as practical clause of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Air Act amendment in 1990 for attainment cannot be met by the year 2010 or within a reasonable extension of time for severe nonattainment regions.

When one examines the time frames of the proposed implementation of the 8-hour standard, one finds that the time frame for nonattainment extends by more than one decade. This is an absurd result by any standards, due to the fact and common sense that the 8-hour standard was enacted because of the new health data regarding the adverse effects of ground level ozone on the general public.

The proposed implementation plan's options for the new 8-hour standard exposes the general public to ten more years of unhealthy air quality, while the intentions of the 8- hour standard was to protect the health of the general public due to new science that supports the fact that ground-level ozone is worse for the health of the general public than previously understood. These proposed implementations place the Bush Administration and the U.S. EPA in a position of neglect with regard to the health of the general public regarding ozone.

Nonattainment deadlines for the standards that are later than 2012 would trigger a lawsuit. Therefore, I now present the U.S. EPA with Freedom of Information Act requests. The requests are as follows:

The first Freedom of Information Act request: What is the probability of a ground level ozone event that would trigger a violation of the 8-hour standard based upon concentration of ozone precursors in all suspected counties for nonattainment of the 8-hour standards based upon weather conditions from data of the past 100 years in each of those counties? If there exists no data for 100 years, then base the calculation on the largest year amount data. Furthermore, what is the probability of triggering a ground-level ozone event if the ozone precursors from a point, area or major source were reduced in the ozone transportation region by 70 percent, by 80 percent and by 90 percent? Please use the most current data for ozone precursors.

The second request: How many premature deaths and asthma attacks would be prevented and what is the cost savings of health expenses due to a 70 percent, 80 percent and 90 percent reduction of ozone precursors in the ozone transportation region if they were implemented in 2005, compared to the proposed implementation timetables of the 8- hour standard by the U.S. EPA?

The purpose of examining the historical weather events that would lead to adverse levels of ground-level ozone is to back a statement recently published in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution on Thursday, June 26th. The article clearly states that the weather greatly affects the violations of the ozone standard. I quote: Although scientists attribute much of the approvement to favorable weather, the number of days that the area violated the federal smog standard dropped to seven last year from twenty-one in 1999.

Our position is that the health of the general public is too important to rely on the fickleness of the weather. Therefore, it would be considered an absurd result or absurd basis if attainment solely rested on the weather. For example, if attainment in 2004 can be achieved by the weather and wind direction in previous years in a specific region, then in subsequent years, the weather and wind direction could produce adverse health effects due to ground- level ozone being above the 8-hour standard for several years before the same area is found to be in nonattainment status under the implementation of the standard. This is a principle widely understood by the general public and does not protect the health and welfare of the general public. Predicting the weather for three days in advance is a difficult job for any meteorologist.

Since 1998, the lack of action by the federal government to promulgate the 8-hour ozone standard and the lack of good-faith efforts by the owners of older

coal-fired powerplants, the federal government and Congress to retire these facilities or reduce their ground-level ozone precursors over the 30 years had had a cost on the general public in terms of health and monetary expenses.

My next Freedom of Information request is: What is the estimated effects on the health of the general public and estimated cost of monetary expenses associated with these health costs during the period of 1998 through 2007 due to ground-level ozone?

Furthermore, this proposal states that the local control technologies on industries and control technologies on the electricity-generating units are expensive. Could I have the first slide, please?

This could be furthest from the truth. The cost of reducing a ton of ozone precursors per ton is the lowest for coal-fired powerplants, followed by local controls on industries, then controls on mobile sources. Figure 1 illustrates the reality. The cost to reduce a ton of NOx on an automobile is between $10,000 and $20,000 per ton. The costs for industrial control technologies to reduce volatile organic compounds, including hazardous air pollutants, ranges from $3,000 to $5,000 per ton for reasonable available control technology, to roughly $4,000 to $8,000 per ton for best available control technology and MACT technology. The cost of reducing a ton of NOx from an electricity-generating unit is between $1,500 to $2,000 per ton. Clearly, industry and powerplants have the lower cost, with due respect and objectivity to powerplants, especially coal-fired powerplants having technology issues when a multi-pollutant approach is taken to reduce nitrogen oxides, sulfur and mercury. Being an expert in advance control technologies for VOCs and NOx, I know much about the cost of technologies.

For example, the state-of-the-art of VOC control technologies works as follows: With advanced electric technology, one push of a button will provide a 70 percent reduction in VOCs. This would be BACT technology. A push of another button on the same machine would produce a

90 percent reduction in VOCs. Press another button, and the same machine will produce 95 to 99 percent reduction in VOC precursors. Press another button on the same machine, and the machine allows for an increase in the tons of VOCs to be reduced.

This advanced technology was developed through DARPA, the Defense Advance Research Program Agency, under President Bush, President George Herbert Walker Bush, our President's father. This technology is readily available and can be readily produced in mass quantity. In the 1994-1995 period, U.E. EPA Administrator Carol Browner was given a highly competitive cost for the earlier technology of advanced electric technologies that used resistive heating elements in add-on controls at the first Common Sense Initiative meeting.

This newer technology also has that same cost. If the technology is not low enough for competition, the products can be made in China, reducing manufacturing costs by 75 percent. Further cost reductions can be achieved by exploiting cheap labor in third world countries where people work for a dollar. Without a doubt, environmental technology initiatives for hydrogen, solar energy, renewable fuel and conventional energy production under George W. Bush will produce the same rapid advancement most likely within five years.

Statements regarding local controls that affect air quality in this proposed implementation of the 8-hour standard are highly suspect to the nature of these statements. The position of the EPA on reducing ozone precursors locally must be influenced by some other reason besides costs. Quite possibly, money contributions control an oligarchy that greatly influences the U.S. EPA's decision.

Free enterprise and market-driven trading programs could put a stop to this moligarchy from preventing reductions of ground-level ozone precursors in local environments. Free enterprise and free markets will allow the general public and the customers of power companies to influence local air quality by supporting controls on local industry through power companies reducing emissions from their customers. Without a doubt, local communities would rather have the emissions from a plant next door to their community reduced instead of distant reductions controlled by a moligarchy that runs the U.S. EPA.

Also, if Congress and the President can provide an 80 percent tax writeoff for the purchase of a Hummer and other heavy-duty trucks that produce ozone precursors, then Congress and the President can provide an 80 percent tax writeoff for local controls that reduce ozone precursors.

Furthermore, any implementation that bases nonattainment status on proposed modeling of attainment will be challenged in court. Neither the Clean Air Act or the Clean Air Act amendment allows for this action. Either an area has attainment status or has a nonattainment status.

Models and modeling by the U.S. EPA is highly suspect, and input data is highly suspect as well. The validity of the U.S. EPA's modeling is even stated within this proposal. Other proposed ideas for modeling raises questions about the intent of the U.S. EPA. While this proposal -- U.S. EPA cites cost for the reasons that the U.S. EPA will perform modeling for candidate marginal and moderate nonattainment areas in order to prove that these area should be given a waiver for nonattainment status. Suspicion is quite warranted. There is reasonable doubt that the cost is the U.S. EPA's primary concern for modeling.

In recent months, I have had conversations and contact with South Carolina's Department of Environmental Health Control, DHEC, and U.S. EPA officials in Research Triangle Park and Region 4 offices. In a meeting with DHEC on March 25, 2003, DHEC officials stated that their models showed it would be doubtful to reach attainment by 2007 without further controls on industries and an electricity-generating unit. When I spoke with DHEC on June 26, 2003, I was told there would be no problem with all of South Carolina being able to reach attainment by 2007 based upon new modeling.

Were the results of the new models just tweaked for attainment? Were accurate assumptions made for the new results? Another example of inaccurate data is found in New Jersey by an action known as the Camden sweeps. The Camden sweeps found that reporting of emissions were inaccurate. Another example of data inaccuracies is that data for a court case was lost in the Midwest recently. These are just some examples of the problems with models, modeling and data that the public is aware of.

Further, I had a recent conference call with U.S. EPA officials in the Region 4 office and in Research Triangle Park regarding the concept that South Carolina is a NOx-
limited area. The U.S. EPA officials, experts as they are, could not provide me with any relationship to the effect of different ozone precursors on ground-level ozone formation which would relate to an exchange of a VOC for NOx emissions. I was assured by the Region 4 official that this was a complicated and difficult thing to do.

Further attesting to this same type of accuracy of the U.S. EPA and this type of relationship is given in the proposal for the implementation of the 8-hour standard. Therefore, how can the health and the welfare of the general public be based on these models in a

non-cautious manner? Models possibly could be utilized similar to the concept in medical practice, cause no harm. Models possibly could be used for cautious predictions that protect public health, but should not be used to predict the future of public health.

Also noted is a point from conversations with U.S. EPA officials that these models are not tested or verified in local measurements, near local sources that are away from ozone monitors.

Further evidence to the accuracy of the U.S. EPA models and modeling was provided in a June 18, 2003 article in the Atlanta Constitution. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the EPA's model for Atlanta was incorrect. The Court held that the independent modeling proved the U.S. EPA wrongfully accounted for the local effect of ozone precursors on Atlanta's ground-level ozone. The U.S. EPA Region 4 experts were wrong again. Can the public actually trust their health and welfare on these inaccurate models, data and modeling?

In the opinion of ESTEC Enterprises and myself, implementation should be sooner, rather than later, and free enterprise and free markets should assist in attainment to be as expeditious as practical.

(Whereupon, there was a brief discussion off the record.)

MR. DALTON: Figure 2 depicts the NOx SIP call trading region in orange, pretty much east of the Mississippi. The red areas are candidate areas for nonattainment areas of the new 8-hour standard and the blue areas are nonattainment areas for the 1-hour standard. These areas are based upon 1998 predictions by the U.S. EPA.

Free enterprise and free markets could be used to expedite healthier air quality to these nonattainment areas. Local controls can improve local air quality by trading local ozone precursors for transport ozone precursors. For example, in the red areas, if there are coal-fired powerplants that are not situated near large communities, they could be used -- the local reductions in the red areas could be used to trade off against these transport NOx emissions.

VOC and NOx emissions can be traded between each species. This type of trading -- apples for oranges, VOCs for NOx -- would achieve a reduction in local ozone precursors that is more reliable than reduction of transport ozone precursors, because transport ozone precursors are affected by weather conditions and wind direction. Local communities and industries would use their buying power to make their own choices, instead of the federal government dictating how and when local communities should have healthy air quality.

Also, this free enterprise and free market approach prevents the federal government, lobbyists and moligarchies from dictating the health of local air quality, the time frame of reaching healthy air quality in local communities and places control back in local communities.

(Whereupon, there was a brief discussion off the record.)

MR. SILVASI: Do you have this in your testimony?

MR. DALTON: Yes. That is the USPIRG data from, I think, 1998 that shows the excess emissions on the right of coal-fired powerplants. Then we do a calculation to see what the excess emissions actually do.

If you go to the next slide, that is where the actual summation of the data is, right there (indicating). The Clinton Administration said that it cost about

$14 billion to clean up these excess air emissions from the powerplants. If you take the typical cost of a piece of pollution control equipment, which is $225,000, or a 2,500 CFM smokestack, which is about 90 percent of the smokestacks, you go with emissions credits trading, and if the credits trade around $3,500, you could pretty much clean up all the stacks, 45,000 of them, in the United States.

So Figures 3 and 4 show the abundance of NOx emissions from the coal-fired powerplants are readily available. Furthermore, allowance allocations can be greatly reduced in order to have power companies earn allowances by purchasing early reduction credits from the reduction of ozone precursors by local industries and initiatives such as paying people $100 to replace older catalytic converters after 2007.

Furthermore, congressional legislation such as the Clean Power Act, the Clear Skies Act and other initiatives by senators from Arizona and Connecticut call for emission credits trading programs. The most effective trading program would be a Cap and Earn program instead of a Cap and Trade.

In the end, I support an interpollutant, open market emissions credits trading program, and I believe that the future will show that Ms. Whitman's free enterprise and free market approach of emission credits trading would prove to be the best way to improve air quality as expeditiously as practical and will ultimately empower the people.

Furthermore, the Early Action Compacts that I represent had poor participation by voting members, unequal representations of society, no Robert's rules of orders for addressing issues, minutes of the meetings that did not actually represent the issues discussed, notices of meetings typically were given in short terms with, on occasion, no notice at all. While some of these actions are due to the speed of progress needed to meet the Early Action Compacts, most are inexcusable.

Finally, Ms. Eldridge left the meeting upset because it was apparent to her that the members that are responsible for forming implementation strategies under the Early Action Compacts were more concerned about doing as little as possible for reducing ozone precursors than ensuring the protection of air quality.

Thank you for your time.

MR. HELMS: Thank you.

Questions?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: I have one clarifying question. You mentioned the magic words several times, Freedom of Information.

MR. DALTON: Yes.

MR. HELMS: Do you intend this to be a Freedom of Information --

MR. DALTON: Oh, absolutely. Do I need to submit it to someone else or --

MR. HELMS: Mechanically putting in the testimony I don't think will do it. He should formally submit it?

MS. TIERNEY: I am not a FOIA expert, so I am not positive, but I think you need to submit a letter.

MR. DALTON: All right. That's fine.

MR. HELMS: I would send your request in a letter to the Administrator, and it will get sent down to the appropriate person. That would be much more effective.

MR. DALTON: Okay. Thank you.

MR. HELMS: No problem with you doing it, just do it that way.

MR. DALTON: I intended to do that anyway.

MR. HELMS: Thank you for your time.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Robert Dalton was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Is there a Heather Quinlan here? You have been sitting very patiently back there. The podium is yours.

TESTIMONY OF HEATHER QUINLAN

MS. QUINLAN: Good afternoon. My name is Heather Quinlan. I am a fourth-year environmental science student at the University of California in Riverside. This summer I am interning in Washington, D.C. with the National Parks Conservation Association, and I thank you for this opportunity to speak in front of you today.

I come before you today asking for a more rapid and strict set of implementation plans for the 8-hour ozone standard. Ground-level ozone is bad for the economy, causing a loss of productivity due to human health problems, as well as mounting medical bills. Ozone is a major contributor to a variety of respiratory problems. You have heard about a lot of them already today.

According to the American Lung Association, ozone is, quote, one of the most damaging and most pervasive of common outdoor pollutants, end quote. The cost of medical care for these conditions and the lost production from sick days is a tremendous burden on polluted areas. Ozone also negatively affects our natural environment, with consequences ranging from decreased agricultural production and forest damage to diminished aesthetic conditions. Commercial forestry and agriculture experience lower yields and lower profits due to

ozone-related plant damage.

The beauty of our national parks and other natural spaces is obscured behind some of the worst air pollution in the nation. National parks are designated as Class 1 areas that warrant the strictest air pollution protection under the Clean Air Act, yet they continue to experience forest damage due to elevated levels of ozone.

The switch to an 8-hour standard of 80 parts per billion is a step in the right direction; however, it will do little to improve the current state of the air unless it is implemented in a timely and effective manner. The proposal set forth by the EPA allows too much leeway for nonattainment areas. Attainment deadlines need to be enforced and not extended, pushing the heaviest polluters to clean up their systems on schedule. New source review and transportation conformity can not be left out of Early Action Compacts which, if they were, could cause an uneven distribution of air pollution within a region. The Clean Air Act needs to be enforced in its entirety without weakening various provisions at the expense of our health.

Before I conclude, I would like to share my own experience with living with ozone pollution. I grew up and still live in San Bernadino County in California, a county with the worst ozone pollution in the country. As a child, my lungs would hurt from swimming in the pool or playing outside. Even now, 15 years later, clear views of local mountains happen only in winter, if we are lucky. I haven't seen the mountains for probably a month now. You just have to trust they are there. Hiking trips into the hills surrounding UCR are often canceled, due to the dense cloud of particulates and ozone and smog that rest against the hills. In fact, San Bernadino National Forest is primed for one of the largest forest fires there in recent history, in part due to ozone damage of plant tissues.

Presently, I have been living in the Capitol for a week now and, instead of jogging past monuments and museums, I exercise in a building, unable to enjoy the sights of our beautiful capitol. I do this to protect my health because the regulations are not.

In conclusion, I would like to say that nonattainment areas have already had too long to fix the ozone pollution problem. The quality and duration of human life are influenced by the decisions that will be made regarding this issue. I ask the EPA to protect human health and the natural environment by implementing and enforcing a more forceful ozone implementation policy. Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Heather Quinlan was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Rob Sliwinski. Rob, I am not leaving you. I will be right back.

MR. SILVASI: Just while Rob is coming up here, just a reminder to those that may have come late, we are trying to enforce a five-minute testimony rule. If you find you are going to need more time, in fairness to the other speakers who have not yet spoken, what we will do is ask you to kind of summarize at that point, and then if you are still around, you can come back and resume your testimony after others have had a chance to testify.

Thank you.

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT SLIWINSKI

MR. SLIWINSKI: Good afternoon. My name is Robert Sliwinski, and I am the director of the Bureau of Stationary Sources in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Air Resources. On behalf of Commissioner Crotty, I want to thank you for providing the Department with the opportunity to testify at this hearing. Among its many mandates, the Department is responsible for the preservation, protection and improvement of the air quality in New York State. Under the leadership of Governor George Pataki, the Department is dedicated not to just protecting our air, but to continuously improving air quality.

I am here to present the Department's oral comments on the U.S. EPA's proposed rule to implement the 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standard. Although it is referred to as a proposed rule, the Department notes there is no regulatory text included, only various options on how to implement the 8-hour standard. The Department is concerned that the current rulemaking notice does not sufficiently describe or explain the substance of the upcoming regulatory text or the subjects and issues that are implicated by all the various options listed. We encourage the U.S. EPA to hold a new comment period on the regulatory text after it is proposed.

The U.S. EPA's proposed rule centers on two options for classifying 8-hour ozone nonattainment areas. Option 1 uses the 8-hour design values to classify the areas under the specifications of Subpart 2 of Part D of the Clean Air Act. Option 2 uses the 1-hour ozone design values and allows some areas to be regulated under the more general requirements of Subpart 1 of Part D of the Act.

Overall, the Department supports the use of option 1, because it is more consistent with the provisions of the Clean Air Act and the Supreme Court's direction to U.S. EPA to develop a reasonable resolution of the ambiguity that exists on how parts of Subparts 1 and 2 interact with regard to the revised ozone standards. We believe that option 1 will continue well into the future progress that the states are making to provide clean and healthful air through mandatory pollution controls.

The Department contends that the mandatory control programs established by Congress in Subpart 2, as implemented by U.S. EPA, the states in the regulated community deserve much of the credit for the decrease in ozone pollution that the EPA discusses in the proposed rule. Subpart 2 has done much to level the playing field by requiring that ozone nonattainment areas all have the same core pollution control programs.

EPA's demonstrated preference in the proposed rule for option 2 would place some new 8-hour nonattainment areas under the general requirements of Subpart 1. Choosing this option would obviate congressionally-mandated programs in some 8-hour nonattainment areas, denying the public the protections of those programs and making the now level playing field as lopsided as it was before the 1990 amendments were enacted.

The Supreme Court has stated that although gaps may exist in the scheme of Subpart 2, they do not render inoperative the subpart's carefully designed restrictions on U.S. EPA's discretion in implementing an ozone standard. The Court specifically recognized the gap evident in the structure of Table 1 of Subpart 2 as it relates to the 8-hour standard. Instead of resolving the ambiguity created by this gap, the Department believes U.S. EPA is using this gap in its regulatory proposal to jettison entirely Subpart 2's applicability for many, if not most, nonattainment areas and widening its discretion by relying on Subpart 1. This is just the type of interpretation that the Supreme Court found unreasonable.	In the documents accompanying the proposed rule, U.S. EPA partly justifies its desire to substitute Subpart 1 requirements for the stricter standards of Subpart 2 on a belief that it would benefit many areas of the country. EPA believes that many areas which are currently in attainment of the 1-hour standard but are projected nonattainment for the 8-hour standard will attain the

8-hour standard on the basis of existing regional or national control programs. It appears that EPA would prefer to avoid requiring new control programs for these areas.

Although the regional and national control programs established to bring areas into attainment for the 1-hour standard will help those areas attain the

8-hour standard and must be implemented, they may not be sufficient to bring about this attainment of the 8-hour standard by themselves. Local control programs may be needed for those areas that had attained the 1-hour standard but not the 8-hour standard. If EPA does not consider local controls in the beginning of its implementation planning, it risks delaying attainment when those controls are later determined to be necessary. The Act requires attainment to come as expeditiously as practicable, and EPA's failure to consider local controls in its planning is inconsistent with the Act.

EPA's recognition of the interstate transport of ozone and its precursor pollutants and of the difficulties which downwind states have in meeting their clean air goals because of transport is appreciated. However, the programs developed to address transport, the NOx SIP call and the Section 126 rules, have not been shown to be sufficient by themselves to bring about attainment of the 8-hour standard in all metropolitan areas. U.S. EPA needs to expand these programs to ensure that the ambient levels of background air pollution are low enough for state and local control programs to be effective in completing the task of attaining the 8-hour standard and protecting the public health.

On behalf of Commissioner Crotty, I want to thank you again for this opportunity to comment on the proposed 8- hour ozone rule, and the Department will be sending EPA more detailed written comments prior to the end of the comment period. We also look forward to commenting on the regulatory text when it becomes available. Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you, Rob.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Rob Sliwinski was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Peter Witzler?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Dan Grace. Thank you for waiting.

MR. GRACE: Thank you for having me.

TESTIMONY OF DAN GRACE

MR. GRACE: My name is Dan Grace, and I traveled here from Johnson City, Tennessee to, at first, really just witness these proceedings and to learn a little bit more about air quality standards. After making the long trip, I felt a little bit more compelled to at least offer my comments, so I prepared a really brief and somewhat objective statement. But, after hearing plenty of other people's statements, they sound very similar to mine, so I am just going to sum up really quickly that I think that it is really important that we raise the standards of air quality, and I feel that as an environmentalist, as a participating athlete, outdoor enthusiast and lover of the southern Appalachian Mountains. I also would like to urge you all to please offer a chance at least for the public to comment after you guys come up with your --

MR. HELMS: The regulatory text?

MR. GRACE: Yes.

MR. HELMS: All right.

MR. GRACE: Thank you very much for having me here, and it was a joy taking part in this.

MR. HELMS: Thank you for sitting so patiently.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Dan Grace was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: Molly Rooke?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Pete Witzler again? Molly Rooke?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: I am going to go through and call out a few names of people that had pre-registered but have not shown, or at least our records don't show you are here.

Lenny Kohm?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Matthew Wasson?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Pauline Kaltsunis?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Felicia Davis?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Bahri Aliriza?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: Is there anyone else here that would like to make a statement at this time to offer comments on our proposed 8-hour implementation rule?

(No response.)

MR. HELMS: We will remain here until 5:00, should any of you change your mind. We will go into recess now and we will convene, if not before 5:00 at 5:00, to adjourn.

Again, I want to thank all of you for taking the time, energy and effort to come here to Alexandria, Virginia to testify. The meeting is adjourned, temporarily suspended.

Thank you.

(Whereupon, a recess was taken from 2:28 p.m. to 2:59 p.m.)

MR. SILVASI: We are about to break out of the recess and we will reopen the testimony here at the public hearing. Just a reminder that we have been enforcing a

five-minute rule here, but in light of the fact that there is no one else behind you, we probably won't actually enforce that at this point.

Would you please state your name and your affiliation?

TESTIMONY OF BAHRI ALIRIZA

MR. ALIRIZA: My name is Bahri Aliriza. I am the president for Polytrade International Corporation, which is a corporation that emphasizes on reducing air pollution. I am also a member of the Chesapeake Climate Organization, which also emphasizes on reducing air pollution.

My purpose of being here is to emphasize that we need to do everything and anything that we possibly can to reduce air pollution. We should look at every means possible to us. Otherwise, we are not going to have an environment in the long term. There are various avenues available to us. I know one is wind generation, generating electricity with wind power.

My company emphasizes on fuel additives. We have a product which will reduce emissions 38 to

60 percent, and I encourage everyone to look at our organization. It is on our Web page, under www.polytrade.net. What it will basically do in a nutshell is it will reduce emissions 38 to 60 percent, which I think is very significant, and it will reduce the harmful emissions like your nitrogen oxides, your hydrocarbons and your carbons, and it will not affect any of the operations of anyone that is doing business of driving a vehicle.

It is treated directly into the fuel, whether it is for gasoline or for diesel. For gasoline, one gallon will treat up to 2,000 gallons, and for diesel, one gallon will treat 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel. So it is very, very concentrated, and it will get rid of all the black smoke that is associated with vehicles, with refineries and powerplants, ships. Anything that uses fuel, our product will mix with the fuel and make that fuel burn much, much better, which means that we will all have a much better environment.

And for people that are here that are interested, I do have a business card and I do have a flyer. And if anybody has any questions, I would like to keep it short, but I can explain a little bit more about how it works. In a nutshell, when the hydrocarbons burns, it burns as a chain, and the whole chain doesn't burn. This is why we end up getting carbon buildup in our engines. What our product basically does is it coats the hydrocarbons and breaks them down into individual identical-sized pieces. And then, almost like magnetic, it draws it towards heat, which is where your combustion chamber is, and that is where you get a full combustion, which is basically a full burning. That's what saves you money on fuel, and that is what allows you to have cleaner air. And it has a lot more benefits, like getting rid of water in your fuel, preventing the rusting of your fuel tank, stabilizing the fuel and lubricating your entire engine, so your engine lasts longer.

The product is very, very cost effective, so you are getting better fuel efficiency as well as a longer lasting and a smoother running engine and you are helping the environment by reducing all the emissions. It doesn't get any easier than that.

Thank you.

MR. SILVASI: I just have a question. Would you mind leaving your flyer for the record to contribute to the testimony?

MR. ALIRIZA: My what?

MR. SILVASI: Did you say you had a flyer with you?

MR. ALIRIZA: No. I said I have business cards and I have a flyer, which I will be more than happy to leave, yes.

MR. SILVASI: Okay. And just as a clarifying question, have you been in contact with our Office of Transportation and Air Quality in Ann Arbor with your product?

MR. ALIRIZA: I did make a couple of attempts, I know, at the Department of Transportation in Virginia and there was some interest, and it did go as far as Richmond and then came back to me. But it was very complicated, in that there was a lot of things that were requested from me. One of those requests was independent testing. But nobody was willing to pay for the independent testing, and we are a small business and we do have a budget. That is one of the problems for us.

But the other problem is that the testing is -- when it is done, it is usually done in a laboratory, and our product is not meant to work in the laboratory. It is meant to work out in the field in real life, real working conditions. And we will provide free samples, whether it is to the Department of Transportation or any organization that is substantial, to prove to them that the product does work.

The problems that we have had in the past in labs doing the work is that they would put, like, one drop of our product onto, like, so many drops of fuel, and they would expect miracles under a microscope. Well, our product doesn't exactly work that way. First of all, if you do that, you don't have a mixture, so you have to actually mix the product. The other downfall is that the product needs a little bit of what we call curing time. It is like making wine. It needs to -- if it can sit in there for, like, two days maximum, you will get the maximum benefit, but even if you have a couple of hours, it will show its effects.

Then each time you use the product -- like carbon with vehicles, it can only get rid of one layer of carbon at a time, so the second time you will notice tremendous power in your vehicle, and you will also notice tremendous savings in your miles per gallon. But the third and fourth time you will notice even more so. So that is kind of how the product works.

Thank you.

MR. SILVASI: Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Bahri Aliriza was concluded.)

MR. SILVASI: There are no more speakers at this point, so we will again recess until another speaker shows up.

Thank you.

(Whereupon, a recess was taken from 3:06 p.m. to 3:28 p.m.)

MR. HELMS: We will reopen, reconvene the hearing. Our next speaker is James Lowenstern.

MR. LOWENSTERN: That's correct.

MR. HELMS: James, if you will identify yourself with an address, how we can reach you, who you represent, and then the mic is yours.

MR. LOWENSTERN: Okay. 3450 Terrace Court, Apartment 1044, Alexandria, Virginia 22302. And do you want the e-mail?

MR. HELMS: The e-mail would be great.

MR. LOWENSTERN: Okay. It is zuboguy@aol.com. I represent myself and the Green Party.

TESTIMONY OF JAMES LOWENSTERN

MR. LOWENSTERN: Greetings. Thanks for the opportunity to speak before you. This may be slightly different than you have heard before, but it looks like you have had a little break.

There is no argument there is a problem with air pollution and there are some nonattainment problems. I think right now in the world and the nation, currently we have the technology and the brainpower to do renewables in non- polluting sources of energy and waste disposal. That would mean no more burning of carbon fuels, no more nuclear and no incinerators, so there would be no toxic byproducts. That would be less lung problems, less asthma, less emphysema.

We need to bite the economic bullet of the market economy and take into account the pollution poison. That is the bottom line. Instead of the economic bottom line, the bottom line should be the health. So, again, let's use the brainpower to get these technologies that we already know about on the road so we can have a safer world.

Thanks.

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much for coming in. We appreciate you taking the time to come back.

(Whereupon, the testimony of James Lowenstern was concluded.)

(Whereupon, a recess was taken from 3:30 p.m. to 4:20 p.m.)

MR. HELMS: We will reconvene the hearing and go on the record. We have another speaker. Sir, state your name.

MR. NEWELL: My name is Skipper, legally Frederick, Newell.

TESTIMONY OF FREDERICK NEWELL

MR. NEWELL: I have, like, two seconds of something to say. I don't drive a car purposely. I ride my bike everywhere, take public transportation. It has been my life. Lately it has been really sad, because I hate riding my bike because of all the exhaust. I really -- I choke when I ride my bike, and there is not very good paths, you know, away from main highways and things like that. So any help with emission regulations and things like that would be help on my lungs. But otherwise, I am moving to Charlottesville, where the air is a lot fresher than here.

I think that is about it, besides the fact that I do think about air pollution as affecting us all, and I think that we don't even realize that -- I am sure you guys do, but most people don't realize that there is -- what is it -- 15 million -- that's like the average -- tons of carbon dioxide in the air every day. I mean, except for the fact that trees are loving it, I am not.

That's it. Thank you.

MR. HELMS: Thank you very much. We appreciate you coming over.

(Whereupon, the testimony of Frederick Newell was concluded.)

MR. HELMS: We will recess the hearing now.

(Whereupon, a recess was taken from 4:21 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.)

MR. SILVASI: The public hearing on implementation of the 8-hour standard proposal is hereby adjourned, being that there are no other speakers, and it is 5:00.

Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, at 5:00 p.m., the public hearing in the above entitled matter was concluded.

CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER

I, MAUREEN S. BENNIE, the officer before whom the foregoing proceedings were taken, do hereby certify that the witnesses whose testimony appears in the foregoing transcript of proceedings was taken by me stenographically and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me; that said transcript of proceedings is a true record of the testimony given by said witnesses; that I am neither counsel for, related to, nor employed by any of the parties to the action in which these proceedings were taken; and, further, that I am not a relative or employee of any attorney or counsel employed by the parties hereto, nor financially or otherwise interested in the outcome of these proceedings.

______________________________

Maureen S. Bennie

Verbatim Court Reporter