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Charles E. Gillman Company
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Sierra Tucson
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CEO/President

The Governor's Regulatory Review Council gave its stamp of approval last week to regulations to reduce hazardous air pollutants.

The new rules allow the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, or ADEQ, to require companies "to install new pollution-control equipment every time they start, expand or alter operations if it results in anything but a minimal increase in any of the 73 toxic chemicals that the ADEQ hopes to regulate," Howard Fischer reported in the Star on Wednesday. These chemicals are classified as hazardous air pollutants.

These new rules aren't going unnoticed. Business claims that state law doesn't give the ADEQ the authority to enforce the rules. Lawyers are probably already writing their briefs for a legal challenge before the rules go into effect Jan. 1.

And there's more: Legislation, which has been approved by the Senate and is in the House, could have an impact on the department's ability to act on the new regulations.

In a March 8 editorial, we asked legislators to put public health before business expenses and profits, and reject the bill that would limit the agency's ability to control these toxic chemicals.

We reiterate the position: Kill the bill. It's unnecessary.

The legislation might be moot. It's the Regulatory Review Council's job to make sure the ADEQ is not overreaching its authority; its function is to see that regulations are reasonable responses to the problems they are designed to solve. If the bill is passed, it might be too late to have an impact on the new rules.

While federal laws affect major polluters, the state wanted to regulate midsize industries' emissions as far back as 1993, but specific regulations were never adopted. A 1992 law directed the ADEQ to develop state regulations for air pollutants, but for the last 13 years or so, administrations and bureaucrats kept the controversial measures quietly tucked away.

If legislators can see through the brown haze in the Phoenix area, they'll let the bill go up in smoke and allow the new regulations to go into effect. Then we can all breathe easier.