AGC members, particularly its highway contractors, may breathe a sigh of relief when learning that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized a rule to relax a mandate for smaller cities to install near-road nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions monitoring stations. Indeed, it would not have been easy to administer a comprehensive monitoring network near roadways and obtain results that can be easily understood. Bad data could have pushed more areas into “nonattainment,” which puts highway/transit funding and new construction in jeopardy. AGC was also concerned about the increased use of roadway concentration data in future standard-setting processes or to inform transportation planning and decision making. (For instance, AGC recently responded unfavorably to a U.S. DOT proposal that contemplates measuring greenhouse gas emissions from on-road mobile sources as a way of evaluating highway performance.)
Looking back, the requirements for states to monitor and measure NO2 levels near roadways first appeared when EPA tightened its national air quality standards (NAAQS) for NO2 gas in early 2010. AGC had urged EPA to remove the wide-ranging monitoring provision from its NO2 NAAQS proposal. AGC's comment letter also recommended that EPA consider a pilot study to determine how roadway monitoring of NO2 would function in the “real world” before imposing this costly new system, especially considering the many existing air emission/fuel regulations and voluntary programs that will continue to reduce emissions.
The current action does not modify EPA’s requirements for near-road NO2 monitors in densely populated urban areas or area-wide NO2 monitoring. The final rule and EPA’s fact sheet are available on the agency’s website – click here.
If you would like additional information, please contact Leah Pilconis, senior environmental advisor to AGC, at pilconisl@agc.org.