Opinion ID: 185760
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Rate of Progress Reductions

Text: 25 The Sierra Club argues next that the EPA could not approve the SIPs for the Washington Area because the plans fail to provide for rate of progress reductions for the years after 1999. We agree. 26 The Act provides that revisions to a SIP for an area of serious nonattainment must reduce the emission of VOCs by at least 3 percent of baseline emissions each year, unless the EPA determines that a lesser reduction is called for in light of technological achievability. 42 U.S.C. § 7511a(c)(2)(B)(i), (ii). As the Sierra Club observes, therefore, with an attainment date in 2005, the rate of progress plan for the Washington area had to demonstrate a 9% reduction in emissions from 1996 to 1999, another 9% from 1999 to 2002, and another 9% from 2002 to 2005. Yet the SIPs provide for no reductions after 1999, and the EPA approved the omission on the ground that it would be unreasonable to lock the downwind area into fixed progress requirement reductions from local sources, when the combination of local reductions with upwind area source emission reductions is what will bring the area into attainment. Approval, 66 Fed. Reg. at 603/2. 27 The EPA's reason is of no moment. The Act by its terms makes the 3% annual minimum rate of progress a prerequisite for approval of a revised SIP. The EPA therefore had no authority to approve the SIPs for the Washington Area notwithstanding the omission of a rate of progress plan for the years after 1999.