EPA Ordered to Review Colorado Construction Pollution Exemption

The Environmental Protection Agency failed to justify its approval of Colorado’s air plan that omits construction operations from oversight despite otherwise properly assessing the state’s revised new pollution source permitting language, a federal appeals court said Monday.

An environmental group alerted the EPA that Colorado’s updated state implementation plan for air quality changed the definition of “Commencement of Operation” to disregard “emissions from drilling, fracking and well completion,” the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit said. The agency “improperly assumed that the revision wasn’t substantive,” the court ruled.

Colorado revised its State Implementation Plan in 2019 to comply ...