Louis County, expressed disappointment. But environmentalists said the announcement showed the EPA didn't need more time. It sounds like EPA is just stalling. Christie Whitman, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is planning to hold a morning news conference in Fenton to release the EPA's decision. The EPA also will extend the region's deadline for meeting ozone standards set by the Clean Air Act to Nov. 15, 2004.
Ozone is a key component of smog.
Bond and other members of the region's congressional delegation have lobbied Whitman, arguing that the region's pollution controls are working and that more measures would damage the local economy. The affected St. Louis region includes Madison, Monroe and St. Clair counties in Illinois and the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County and Franklin, Jefferson and St. Charles counties in Missouri. Today's announcement is the latest development in a flurry of legal and political activity over how the region can balance the need for healthy air and economic development. The determination could have bumped St. Louis from moderate nonattainment status to serious nonattainment. That bump-up could have led to tougher pollution controls and such penalties as the loss of federal highway money.