by Brian x. Mccrone
PHILADELPHIA. Federal regulators are holding hearings today at a city hotel to discuss new proposed standards on ozone pollution, or smog.
Clean air advocates will meet today in Philly and next week at other locations around the country to discuss federal ozone pollution standards.
Like last year’s federal public hearings held in Philadelphia on new soot pollution controls, clean air advocates will be at the Radisson Plaza-Warwick hotel to demand even stronger standards than the Environmental Protection Agency is recommending.
“It is interesting that they’ve come back here once again,” PennEnvironment clean air advocate Nathan Willcox said yesterday. “We have our share of soot and smog in the Philadelphia region.”
PennEnvironment, a leading state environmental lobbyist group, has invited several experts to speak during a 1 p.m. news conference outside the 12-hour EPA hearing today. Families affected by asthma have also been asked to share their respiratory system struggles.
The federal agency is holding hearings in Philadelphia and Los Angeles today, followed by visits in Atlanta, Houston and Chicago next week.
Willcox said the new federal standard falls short of experts’ recommendations.
“Once again, the initial proposal doesn’t go as far as their scientists say it should,” he said. “And if you have a weak pollution standard, then there is no mandate in the Clean Air Act for states to strengthen their own standards.”
