Summary
The Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump has signaled a shift in how it evaluates state plans meant to improve visibility in national parks and wilderness areas, a change conservationists say would make it easier for polluters to remain in operation. The dispute centers on the federal regional haze rule, which requires states to develop plans every 10 years to limit emissions and monitor air pollution in more than 150 protected areas across the country.
In one example described by conservation groups, federal regulators told West Virginia officials about a year ago that the state’s plan to clear sulfur and smog from skies over national wilderness areas was not good enough. Six months later, the Trump-controlled EPA approved a revised approach, according to the Associated Press reporting, saying technology evaluations would not be necessary so long as visibility met projected benchmarks.
Advocates say the change reflects broader efforts to allow states to step back from pollution restrictions that they credit with clearer air over many protected lands over the past quarter-century. They cite the agency’s evolving review of state proposals as a key mechanism, including EPA decisions to reject state plans that conservationists say are too weak and to approve ones that a Biden-era administration had rejected.
A federal regulation known as the regional haze rule requires states to come up with plans every 10 years to limit emissions and monitor air pollution impacting visibility across a network of national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges and tribal reservations in 36 states, according to the AP story. The Associated Press report said the rule has contributed to declines in sulfur and smog emissions since 1999, citing figures from Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, and it noted that the average visual range has increased in some Western parks.
Conservationists argue that, while visibility can improve for multiple reasons, relying on whether projections are met can miss whether plants reduce pollution in ways needed to sustain clean air. National Parks Conservation Association clean air program director Ulla Reeves said in the AP report that EPA is “blessing states that haven’t done a good enough job” and “dramatically changing course on states like West Virginia, like California, like Hawaii, like Colorado,” adding that the agency is using these reversals to advance an agenda of keeping polluting facilities online.
EPA spokesperson Brigit Hirsch, in a statement carried by AP, said the agency is committed to following the law and cannot approve state plans that do not follow the law. The AP report said both EPA and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection declined to comment on pending litigation.
The West Virginia episode highlights how the rule’s evaluation standards have shifted, according to the AP account. The agency had signaled immediately after Trump took office in January 2025 that it would reject West Virginia’s plan, the report said, because state officials decided not to require eight coal-burning power plants to assess whether they needed stronger pollution-reduction technology. The state asked five plants to perform an evaluation, but only one complied, the AP report said, and other plants argued they were already under federal emission restrictions or were meeting visibility benchmarks.
Six months later, the AP report said, EPA changed course and approved the plan. The agency adopted a new policy under which it treats state plans as sufficient if the state can show visibility improvements exceed projections at national parks and wilderness areas affected by the pollution, and the report said West Virginia had done that.
The National Parks Conservation Association, the Sierra Club and Earthjustice are suing EPA, according to the AP report, arguing that the policy allowed West Virginia to avoid imposing pollution reductions and threatens air quality in national parks that include Shenandoah, the Great Smoky Mountains and Mammoth Cave. Sierra Club attorney Joshua Smith said the new policy is a “backdoor way to kick the can down the road,” contending that visibility benchmarks might be reached through plant closures or fuel switching while some facilities still pollute.
The AP report also described how EPA’s approach diverged from earlier objections to California’s plan. It said that in 2024, during the Biden era, the EPA had said it planned to reject California’s plan because state officials did not consider pollutants beyond smog and did not explain why they did not evaluate pollution levels at refineries and airports, while EPA later approved it “last summer” in part because visibility was meeting benchmarks.
Beyond West Virginia, AP said Trump’s EPA rejected Colorado’s regional haze plan this January in part because it would have closed a coal-burning power plant near Pueblo without consent from the owner, Colorado Springs Utilities. According to EPA documents cited by AP, the agency pointed to the utility’s concerns about the closure’s impact on electricity supply and said forcing closure could be illegal. The AP report said Colorado has challenged the rejection in federal court in Denver, and it quoted Michael Ogletree, the senior director of state air quality programs, saying the EPA’s action was not based on a failure to meet regional haze requirements or visibility protections that Colorado continues to meet.
In Hawaii, the AP report said the state’s plan calls for closing six boilers at two power plants on the islands of Hawaii and Maui, as well as options for shutting down certain diesel generators on Maui. The EPA had not made a final decision as of the AP story, but in February it signaled it planned to reject those closures, saying the state had not shown the shutdowns would be legal in a way that would support regional haze compliance.
The AP story said the Trump EPA has warned that it will not support state efforts that push for plant closures to comply with regional haze requirements, and it told states to consider how closures or pollution-reduction technology could affect grid reliability. In rejecting Colorado’s plan, the AP report said EPA stated that “Coal-fired power plants are essential sources of baseload power” and that “Ensuring affordable and reliable energy supplies is a top priority of the Trump administration,” while also pointing to surging energy demand, manufacturing, and national security interests.
Utilities industry and coal-supporting groups did not respond to messages seeking comment, according to AP. The AP story also included an account from Jim Schaberl, a former air and water quality manager at Shenandoah National Park in northern Virginia near the West Virginia line, who said that when he started in 2008, haze from West Virginia coal plants often hovered over the park and that visibility has improved since then. He said he thinks Trump is threatening to reverse those gains and quoted Schaberl describing support for coal as “like digging up a grave,” saying “It’s nonsensical and, I think, lawless.”