Administration Abandons Proposal to Weaken Air Quality Protections for National Parks

In a series of correspondence from August 2007 to July 2008, Chairman Waxman urged the Environmental Protection Agency not to finalize proposed regulations that would have degraded air quality in our National Parks and other areas with clean air. The Oversight Committee’s investigation of the proposed rulemaking revealed that the agency had conducted no analysis of the proposal’s impact on air quality and that expert technical staff at EPA and the National Park Service opposed the proposal because it would make it easier to build polluting power plants near national parks. On December 10, EPA announced it would not go forward with the regulation.