MADISON, Wis. (AP) \u2014 A year ago, federal environmental regulators told West Virginia officials that their plan to clear sulfur and smog from skies over the state\u2019s national wilderness areas wasn\u2019t good enough because a dozen coal plants didn\u2019t analyze whether they needed better pollution controls. <\/p>\n
Six months later, the Environmental Protection Agency, now firmly under President Donald Trump\u2019s control<\/a>, blessed the same plan, saying technology evaluations wouldn\u2019t be necessary as long as visibility hit projected benchmarks. <\/p>\n Conservationists say the about-face in West Virginia is just one example of the Trump administration clearing the way for states to roll back pollution restrictions that have helped clear the air over beloved national parks and wilderness areas over the last 25 years.<\/p>\n A rule has improved visibility, but Trump\u2019s EPA says it\u2019s too tough<\/p>\n A federal regulation known as the regional haze rule<\/a> requires states to come up with plans every 10 years to limit emissions and monitor air pollution in more than 150 national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges and tribal reservations across 36 states. <\/p>\n Since the rule took effect in 1999, more than 90% of parks and wilderness areas have seen sulfur and smog emissions decline by hundreds of thousands of tons annually. The average visual range has increased from 90 miles to 120 miles (145 kilometers to 195 kilometers) in some Western parks, according to the Harvard Law School\u2019s Environmental and Energy Law Program. <\/p>\n But energy producers argue the regulations have done their job and are too costly. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in March 2025 that the agency would look to roll back 31 landmark environmental regulations, including the regional haze rule, to relieve regulatory pressure<\/a> on the fossil fuel industry. <\/p>\n EPA pushes back on state plans<\/p>\n The EPA is still taking public comments on how to soften the federal rule. Meanwhile, conservationists say, the agency has weakened standards for individual state plans by rejecting state proposals the agency considers too tough on polluters and signing off on weak plans the Biden administration had rejected.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re blessing states that haven\u2019t done a good enough job and they\u2019re dramatically changing course on states like West Virginia, like California, like Hawaii, like Colorado,\u201d said Ulla Reeves, director of the National Parks Conservation Association\u2019s clean air program. \u201cThey\u2019re using these reversals and those changes to achieve their agenda of letting polluting facilities stay online.\u201d<\/p>\n EPA spokesperson Brigit Hirsch said in a statement that the agency is committed to following the law and can\u2019t approve state plans that don\u2019t follow the law.<\/p>\n West Virginia about-face lowers the bar<\/p>\n The EPA signaled on the day after Trump took office in January 2025 that it would reject West Virginia\u2019s proposal<\/a>. The agency noted that state officials decided not to ask eight coal-burning power plants to assess whether they needed more pollution-reduction technology to continue making progress toward natural visibility levels at multiple East Coast national parks and wilderness areas.<\/p>\n The state asked five plants to perform an evaluation, but only one complied. One plant argued it was already under federal emission restrictions. The others said they were meeting visibility benchmarks. <\/p>\n The EPA changed course six months later and approved<\/a> the plan, adopting a new policy that state plans are good enough if the state can show visibility improvements exceed projections at national parks and wilderness areas affected by its pollution. West Virginia had done that.<\/p>\n The National Parks Conservation Association, the Sierra Club and the environmental law firm Earthjustice are suing EPA, arguing the new policy allowed West Virginia to avoid imposing pollution reductions and threatens air quality in national parks, including Shenandoah, the Great Smoky Mountains and Mammoth Cave, already one of the nation\u2019s haziest parks. <\/p>\n Environmentalists warn that the new policy has far-reaching implications. Visibility levels might hit benchmarks thanks to plants closing or switching fuels, but relying solely on those measurements allows plants that are still polluting to get away with doing nothing, said Joshua Smith, an attorney for the Sierra Club. <\/p>\n For example, as early as 2024, the Biden-era EPA said it planned to reject California\u2019s plan because state officials didn\u2019t consider pollutants other than smog and didn\u2019t explain why they didn\u2019t evaluate pollution levels at a number of refineries and airports. The Trump EPA approved it last summer in part because visibility was meeting benchmarks.<\/p>\n \u201cWe view this (new policy) as a backdoor way to kick the can down the road,\u201d Smith said. <\/p>\n Both the EPA and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection said they don\u2019t comment on pending litigation.<\/p>\n EPA rejects plant closures in Colorado and Hawaii<\/p>\n