The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday that it had reclassified Denver and Colorado’s northern Front Range as “severe” violators of federal air quality standards, meaning residents are likely to pay higher gas prices and the number of businesses required to apply for air pollution permits will more than double.
The severe label requires motorists in summer months to use a special blend of gasoline that reduces harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and drivers in the nine-county northern Front Range will begin using it in the summer of 2024 unless the state convinces the EPA to grant an exception.
AAA estimates gas prices will increase 20 cents to 30 cents per gallon once drivers start using it.
Michael Ogletree, director of the state’s Air Pollution Control Division, said an additional 600 businesses will be required to apply for federal Title V air permits because the acceptable threshold for ozone-creating emissions is lowered under the new designation. The state now oversees 250 of those permits, he said.
On Friday, state environmental officials said they are prepared to deal with the consequences of the downgrade and are developing a strategy to remove the Front Range from the EPA’s list of places where poor air quality jeopardizes people’s health and contributes to climate warming.
“We all feel a sense of urgency,” said Trisha Oeth, director of environmental health and protection for the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. “The trend has been toward getting cleaner. We just need to keep working on it.”
The EPA announced in April that it planned to downgrade the region’s air quality after it failed to reach the 2008 National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The region previously had been listed as a “serious” violator of federal ozone standards, but it missed a July 2021 deadline to improve, according to an EPA news release.
The EPA’s announcement included four other metropolitan areas that will be reclassified as severe, including Dallas, Houston, New York and the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, a federally recognized tribe in Southern California.
The new classifications settle a lawsuit filed in March against the EPA by four environmental groups, who said the federal agency was too slow to set the new designations and was failing to protect millions of people from the harmful health effects of ozone pollution. A federal consent decree signed earlier this week gave the agency until Thursday to do so.
In an emailed statement, KC Becker, an administrator for the EPA’s region that covers Colorado, said, “EPA’s reclassification of the Front Range acknowledges and addresses the severity of our air quality challenge. Reducing ozone is critical for our health, our environment, our quality of life and our economy. The actions we take as result of this determination will help us turn the tide in a positive direction, toward improved air quality and public health.”
Colorado has a long road ahead when it comes to restoring clean air.
The latest downgrade comes because Colorado failed to meet a 2008 goal that requires ozone emissions to fall under 75 parts per billion annually. Last month, the Regional Air Quality Council said it predicts the region will meet that standard by 2027, which is the next deadline for improvement under the EPA.
However, the state also failed to reach a 2015 National Ambient Air Quality Standards benchmark of lowering ozone emissions to 70 parts per billion annually. And the deadline to reach that goal is 2024, which the Regional Air Quality Council said will be missed.
The goals are out of line because Colorado has been failing to meet national air quality standards since 2012, so its target date for the 2008 standard keeps moving back even as it continues to struggle to attain the more rigorous 2015 goals.
Those National Air Quality Standards require regions to meet certain standards for pollutants in the air: carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone, lead and particulate matter. In Colorado, those pollutants combine on hot summer days to create ground-level ozone, forming a thick smog that blankets the Front Range and causes breathing problems and other illnesses for people.
Colorado environmental regulators knew the downgrade was coming and started making plans for it earlier this year.
Gov. Jared Polis is pushing for more electric vehicles on the road as one way to improve air quality. This year, the General Assembly approved a $65 million grant program to help school districts transition to electric buses as they replace aging vehicles. In August, rides on Regional Transportation District buses and trains were free as part of a statewide push to increase public transportation use.
The Colorado General Assembly approved an additional $47 million for the Air Pollution Control Division to hire more regulators and improve its air quality monitoring technology. Since April, the division has hired 60 new employees, including 13 who will work on permitting, Ogletree said. The division has about 40 more positions to fill.
For years, the division has struggled to send air permit applications to the EPA on time and now the number of businesses it needs to regulate will more than double. For example, one permit for the Suncor Energy refinery’s Plants 1 and 3 is four years overdue because the Air Pollution Control Division has failed to approve it and forward it to the EPA.
Under the federal Clean Air Act, industries that create specified levels of air pollution must file for an air operating permit, and those permits must be renewed every five years. Now that the northern Front Range is classified as a severe violator, that threshold drops to 25 tons per year for nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds from 50 tons per year, Ogletree said.
The state estimates that will add an additional 600 businesses that must apply for those permits. That means more scrutiny from federal and state environmental regulators as they try to reduce harmful emissions.
As for reformulated gas, Polis is vowing to fight that requirement because it will be expensive for consumers who already are burdened by inflation.
There is no provision under existing EPA rules that would allow Colorado to apply for an exception. But Oeth said the administration is working with the federal agency to find alternative ways to reduce air pollution. The Polis administration is arguing that reformulated gasoline has minimal impact when reducing pollution and that there are more effective ways to reach that goal.
“We want the goal of cleaning the air faster just in a way that’s more effective of a strategy here in Colorado,” she said.
