What stands in the way of effective environmental quality efforts in North Dakota? Federal bureaucracy within the Environmental Protection Agency.
That was the crux of recent comments made by Jim Semerad of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality, as reported by the North Dakota Monitor:
“We will go through a great deal of effort to prove something we already know,” said Semerad, who leads the department’s air quality division.
Semerad said EPA staff are well-intentioned but EPA bureaucracy gets in the way of protecting environmental quality.
“Our biggest problem might be the EPA,” Semerad said.
Chuck Hyatt, of DEQ’s waste management division, said one of the biggest roadblocks to working with the EPA is a lack of trust.
“They don’t necessarily trust what is going on in certain states,” Hyatt said. “And I wonder about that. Where does that come from?”
“It’s kind of an invisible thing,” Semerad said of the work created by wildfires. “No additional inspections, no additional improvements to air quality. It’s just a reporting requirement.
“I guess that might be something that the Legislature needs to better understand.”
Messrs. Semerad and Hyatt are right. The EPA’s regulations surrounding air pollution, including the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), require states to account for and minimize pollutants considered harmful to human health. When air quality is affected by events like wildfires, states must prove it and apply for an “exceptional event” designation that allows them to exclude that data from reporting.
North Dakota regulators know that recent “smoky conditions” are due to wildfire smoke from Canada and Western U.S. states. The EPA ought to know it too and entrust states with as much flexibility as possible to address wildfire smoke without being mired in paperwork.