Government▼Watch
Fine particulates (PM2.5 ) could be regulated in Europe for the first time, under proposals put forward this fall. The PM rule is part of the European Commission’s (EC’s) Clean Air Strategy, a plan to reduce the number of people dying prematurely from air-pollution-related diseases by almost 40% from the 2000 level by 2020. The strategy also aims to reduce pollutants associated with fossil-fuel combustion and agriculture by including proposals for NH3, NOx, groundlevel O3, SO2, and VOCs. Concentration limits already exist for these pollutants under various EU laws. Adopted in September, the complete strategy is predicted to cost $8.7 billion (€7.1 billion) a year until 2020, although it mostly repackages current laws into a streamlined program. For PM2.5, the EC proposes a directive for member states to reduce average concentrations by 20% between 2010 and 2020 and would allow each state to choose how best
PHOTODISC
EU contemplates first-ever limit for PM2.5
Member states can choose how best to achieve the 20% cut in average concentrations.
to control its emissions. The directive includes a mandatory cap of 25 mg/m3 in the most-polluted areas. “The 25-mg limit would be mandatory once the directive was adopted and would be reviewed in 2012,” adds Lone Mikkelson, an EC spokesperson on environmental issues.
The overall clean-air strategy includes long-term objectives that may require laws to be revised. For example, it proposes to reduce NH3 emissions from fertilizers and manure for the first time and to tighten controls on emissions from shipping and aviation. Proposals to change current legislation to achieve these aims will appear over the next few years, Mikkelson adds. Kerstin Meyer of the European Environmental Bureau, a federation of environmental citizens’ organizations, says that the best aspect of the strategy is the expansion of environment policy into sectors such as agriculture and aviation. “This is the first step towards real environmental policy integration, but it is still not explicit enough,” she says. “We are disappointed there are no legislative proposals apart from PM2.5.” The air-pollution strategy is one of seven thematic strategies; the others are the marine environment, waste prevention and recycling, sustainable use of resources, soils, pesticides, and the urban environment. —MARIA BURKE
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers allows wetlands to go unprotected, GAO finds On Earth Day 2004, President Bush pledged to create 3 million acres of wetlands in 5 years. Yet the effort by the agency responsible for preserving wetlands, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), is dismal, according to two new reports from the congressional Government Accountability Office (GAO). In a report released on October 1, GAO analysts found that the Corps “is generally not asserting jurisdiction over isolated, intrastate, nonnavigable waters.” The reason? Since early 2003, the Corps has required that its field officers obtain permission from Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., before a permit to drain a wetland can be granted. But the project managers who handle these requests say they “are reluctant to assert jurisdiction over these kinds of waters because of a lack of guidance from headquarters and perceptions that they should not be doing so,” the GAO writes. The confusion stems from a 2002 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court concluding that the Corps had gone too far in asserting its authority to protect isolated, nonnavigable waters solely on the basis of their use as habitat by migratory birds. It
© 2006 American Chemical Society
was this decision that prompted the Corps to require field officers to obtain permission to protect wetlands that fall into this category. GAO also noted that the Corps drafted but didn’t finalize guidance for its district offices about their jurisdiction. In a second report, GAO found that the Corps hasn’t policed the mitigation efforts required by the Clean Water Act to ensure that the mitigation project, designed to build new wetlands to replace those destroyed, has been done. Released on October 7, this report recommends that the Corps devise an approach that includes more specific guidance for the individuals required to develop mitigation projects, with definitions of key terms, including “substantial mitigation”, as well as clarify for Corps staff what kinds of mitigation oversight steps must be taken. “The Corps has consistently neglected to ensure that the mitigation it has required as a condition of obtaining a permit has been completed,” GAO writes. “The Corps priority has been and continues to be processing [development] permit applications.” —CATHERINE M. COONEY
JANUARY 1, 2006 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ■ 11
