Law360 Quotes David Quigley on EPA Changes to Clean Air Act Permitting Program

David Quigley, leader of Akin Gump’s environment and natural resources practice, has been quoted in the Law360 article “Trump EPA’s Air Policy Tweaks Relax Permit Program,” which reports on the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest change to a Clean Air Act permitting program. According to the article, the revised program will provide clarity to facilities seeking to expand their operations and will make it easier to avoid more stringent pollution controls.

The EPA, the article notes, has published a reinterpretation of part of the New Source Review (NSR) program that relates to project aggregation, which covers whether several smaller, but related, projects within a facility must be aggregated for the purposes of determining whether emission increases from a project are significant. If the increases are deemed significant, the project must then go through a lengthy and expensive process to obtain a major source air permit.

With the EPA clarifying the factors that facilities must consider when deciding whether their project requires a major source permit, Quigley thinks the changes are likely to benefit facility operators. “I think you’ll see fewer projects reach the significant thresholds for New Source Review,” he said.

Quigley added that projects will be less likely to be seen as needing aggregation because the changes make it easier to completely separate them. He also said the reinterpretation de-emphasizes the timing of a project, so if projects are constructed within similar time frames that does not necessarily mean they would have to be considered the same project for the purposes of NSR calculation.