Clean Air Groups Fear Rubber Stamp of Emissions Plans (Correct)

The Trump administration vowed to rid the EPA of a backlog of decisions on state plans to manage air pollution. Now advocates wonder if faster analysis raises the risk that the plans may not effectively mitigate dirty air.

States and tribes create State Implementation Plans, or SIPs, in response to federally-set air pollution limits, and those plans must be approved or overhauled by the EPA according to Clean Air Act deadlines.

These plans are part of National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which govern emissions from six air pollutants that are harmful to human health, including ozone and particulate matter. States and tribes create SIPs to carry out these regulations.

President Donald Trump’s EPA has launched an aggressive agenda to roll back environmental and climate regulations in favor of energy and fossil fuel development, which includes handing more regulatory responsibility to the states.

As part of that agenda, the EPA, led by Administrator Lee Zeldin, earlier this month announced its move to clear the slate for SIPs, counting “685 unresolved SIPs with 322 considered overdue.”

But advocates have concerns about how substantive the analysis of unresolved SIPs will be.

“I’m fearful about what decisions will be made as these state plans get fast tracked and to what extent EPA will turn a blind eye to state plans that should be found to be inadequate,” said Daniel Cohan, an environmental engineering professor at Rice University.

Deferring to States

The process will likely be “100% deferential to states,” according to Jeremy Nichols, a senior advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, and the EPA would only disapprove plans that are “grossly inconsistent” with Clean Air Act requirements rather than giving proper weight to whether the emission mitigation plans are truly protective.

“They also are likely to try to play procedural games, like taking the position that SIP approvals aren’t subject to notice and comment on the basis that they were already subject to rulemaking at the state level,” Nichols said in an email.

Had this announcement been made under a Kamala Harris administration, Cohan “would have been delighted.”

But the Trump administration “has really shown very little interest in having environmental protection from the Environmental Protection Agency,” Cohan said.

Zeldin on Tuesday addressed to state officials the agency’s work to clear backlogs.

“We will not approach implementation of policies with a one size fits all mindset,” he said at the Environmental Council of the States’ 2025 spring meeting. The EPA will work with states to tailor plans to the challenges they face, Zeldin said.

The EPA’s plan for SIPs falls in line with the Trump administration’s heavy focus on cooperative federalism, which other EPA leaders like air office chief Aaron Szabo emphasized as a priority.

“Congress structured the Clean Air Act around the principle of cooperative federalism, and controlling air pollution at its source is the primary responsibility of states and local government,” Szabo said in opening remarks to lawmakers at a March 5 Senate hearing before his confirmation.

Legal Constraints

State Implementation Plans require maintenance to make sure they’re adequately protective, and the sheer amount of SIPs that filter through the EPA create a huge amount of work for the agency, according to Holland & Knight senior counsel Zach Pilchen.

States, air districts, and tribes have three years when standards are created to create a SIP, then the EPA has 60 days to ascertain if the submission is complete and 12 months to analyze them for approval or disapproval.

But those deadlines have lapsed many times over decades of presidential administrations, whether it be because of staffing, complicated issues in the SIPs, or other issues.

“In some cases, two years passes for something that that might have been expected to take just several months, and no clear reason is given for for the delays,” Cohan said.

This cycle of delays opens up floodgates of lawsuits against the EPA for missing SIP review deadlines. But quick approvals—especially in pollution-burdened areas of southern Texas and Louisiana—will also likely lead to lawsuits from clean air advocates looking for tougher plans.

“The EPA finds itself in a difficult position,” according to Pilchen. “Its present failure to act on backlogged SIPs creates legal liability, but any decision to approve or disapprove risks additional lawsuits.”

The current legal and staffing landscape puts the administration at an even greater disadvantage.

Not only is the administration slashing personnel, the death of agency deference in court following the US Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision last year also makes more work for EPA staff.

“They will have to wisely use staff resources to clear the backlog in a legally and technically durable way so that courts don’t send them back to the drawing board a year from now,” Pilchen said.