An amendment from Congressman Bill Huizenga designed to protect parts of west Michigan from EPA air quality penalties has been approved in the U.S. House.
The House last month passed the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. It includes language from Huizenga that would block the EPA from applying its ozone attainment rule to Berrien County and part of Allegan County for air pollution that Huizenga says didn’t even originate in those counties.
Huizenga tells us the EPA rule doesn’t make sense.
“It’s just strange to me that part of Allegan County — by the way, it skips Van Buren County and goes into Allegan County — they’re tracking where this air, the particulate matter that is measured as pollution, is damaging,” Huizenga said. “But the thing is, as we know, we don’t produce it here in Michigan. It drifts across Lake Michigan. It’s from Gary, Indiana, Milwaukee, Chicago, and other places like that.”
Huizenga says the EPA has identified Berrien and part of Allegan as not meeting its air quality standards, something that could lead to increased regulation and damage to the region’s economy. However, he believes the agency should instead penalize those areas that create the pollution, not the places to where it drifts.
The Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act was approved by the House on a vote of 210 to 205.
