The state has the third highest asthma rate in the nation, despite our small cities and hundreds of miles of wilderness. A draft of a comprehensive revision of the state’s regional haze plan dated March 1, 2021, which indicates that air quality is improving and is expected to continue to improve over the next decades.Īir pollution may not always be the most visible of environmental hazards in Maine, but it still takes a toll on the health of all of us. The Monitor was unable to reach the Maine Department of Environmental Protection by publishing time Friday morning. “It’s up to EPA, the agency charged with protecting human health and the environment, to hold these states accountable to the law and ensure our national parks, rangers, visitors, wildlife and surrounding communities have clear skies and clean air to breathe,” Stephanie Kodish, senior director and counsel for National Parks Conservation Association’s Clean Air and Climate programs, said in a statement. States issued violation notices now have two years to either submit a late plan or accept an EPA-written plan. The lawsuit argues that, by not issuing notices of violations to states that had missed the deadline, the EPA was neglecting to enforce its own rule. The notices issued to states are also the subject of a lawsuit filed by four environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club. Along with Maine, Alabama, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia missed that deadline and another 6-month extended deadline that followed. Maine submitted its most recent progress report to the EPA in 2016 an updated SIP was due in July 2021.
The rule requires each state to submit a State Implementation Plan (SIP) every 10 years and a 5-year Progress Report after each SIP. Last week, the EPA sent notices to Maine and 14 other states that missed a deadline to, under that rule, submit plans to reduce air pollution in Acadia National Park, Roosevelt Campobello International Park and Moosehorn Wilderness Area.
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