Congress sends Trump a resolution ending Biden-era emissions cleanup rule
DETROIT — Congress has voted to kill a Biden-era rule requiring rubber tire makers to clean up planet-warming emissions from their manufacturing processes in the US.The Environmental Protection Agency finalized rules for the rubber tire industry, specifically previously unregulated rubber processing, last November through amendments to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants.Tires are made of chemicals, compounds and materials that release greenhouse gases, heavy metals and volatile organic compounds, experts say.Republican Virginia Congressman Morgan Griffith, alongside South Carolina Sen.
Tim Scott and Mississippi Sen.Roger Wicker, also Republicans, introduced a resolution to undo the rules earlier this year and it advanced through the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to reverse recently adopted federal agency rules with a simple majority vote in each chamber.
The vote passed in the House on March 5 and the Senate on Tuesday.The measure heads to the president’s desk for signing next.“Like many of the regulations issued during the waning days of the Biden-Harris Administration, the rubber tire manufacturing emission standard utilized questionable emissions data and pointed to negligible health benefits as justification for the rule,” Griffith said in a statement Tuesday.
He said the rule did not serve public health.The standards regulate other so-called “source categories” including asbestos, asphalt roofing processing and manufacturing, dry cleaning, petroleum refineries, other chemical production and processes and more, which — in addition to the environmental concerns — can cause cancer and other serious health problems, according to the EPA.The rubber rule resulted from a court decision that required the EPA to address unregulated emissions from source categories upon the agency’s technology reviews as required by the Clean Air Act.Plaintiffs in the case included the Louisiana Environmental Action Networ...