Montana returns air-quality job to EPA

HELENA – Montana is returning some air-quality work to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, saying insufficient federal funding makes the job unmanageable, the state environmental director said Tuesday.

“The regulatory demands imposed on states by the federal government over the past decade have made it impossible for Montana to fulfill a federal requirement to develop a plan for protecting visibility in national parks and wilderness areas in Montana by December 2007,” said Richard Opper, director of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

State employees who have been doing the work despite “stagnant and uncertain financial support” from the federal government will be reassigned to work that directly protects public health, Opper said in a news release.

A regional haze rule adopted by the EPA gives states until the end of 2007 to develop, for designated natural areas, plans to reduce pollution that impairs visibility. In Montana, that includes Glacier National Park.

“The trend of increasing air-quality program requirements and stagnant funding is not sustainable,” Opper said. “Something has to give, and it is simply time for the states, including Montana, to ‘just say no’ to the feds.”

Opper’s decision came as a surprise, EPA spokesman Frank Montarelli said Tuesday from the agency’s Denver office.

“We are now engaging the state to explore what’s going on, and we’ll get back to you with more when we learn more,” Montarelli said.

Montana is not alone in its reversal, he said. At least one other state, Washington, took the same position, but “the difference there is that the state notified EPA in advance,” he said.

Montarelli said that under the rule adopted in the late 1990s, EPA expects all 50 states to develop plans for air quality in targeted areas to be at “natural background conditions” within a 60-year period.

Montarelli said he did not know how much federal money Montana received, but “it’s probably a pretty significant number. I’m sure it’s in the millions.”

Tom Livers, deputy director of the DEQ, said, “the EPA has not given us any money. This has come down as an unfunded federal mandate.”

He said the agency has used money from state air quality permits.

“We carved out a little bit of a lot of people’s time,” he said.

Bob Habeck, with the DEQ’s air resources unit, said EPA money comes in blocks that are apportioned across DEQ, adding that “It’s not like there’s a checkbook for (air) visibility.”

He said the equivalent of 2 1/2 full-time employees have been working on the visibility program. The state began assigning personnel to it in 1999, he said.

Habeck said program information Montana has compiled likely will be transferred to EPA for its use.

“We want this to be a successful program,” he said. “We just don’t have the resources for it.”