Trump EPA Moves To Let New Hampshire Scrap Car Emissions Tests As Public Comments Close Friday

Public comments close Friday on the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to let New Hampshire leave a Northeast air pollution zone that requires car emissions testing.

The EPA’s proposals, published Aug. 11, would grant New Hampshire’s petition to leave the Ozone Transport Region and conditionally approve the state’s request to drop its vehicle inspection and maintenance program from its federal air quality plan, according to the agency.

The agency is accepting comments on both proposals until Sept. 25, and New Hampshire would leave the region and drop the program only if the EPA finalizes both actions as proposed, the EPA said.

The EPA did not immediately provide a comment on the record, and Republican New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

The Ozone Transport Region is a group of Northeastern states required to include ozone reduction measures in their air quality plans even if they already meet federal ozone standards, the agency said in an Aug. 6 statement.

The region includes New Hampshire as well as Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, D.C., and parts of northern Virginia, according to the EPA’s proposal in the Federal Register.

Because New Hampshire is within the region, its plan includes the inspection program, and the state must leave the region and show that ending the program will not interfere with meeting national air quality standards, according to the EPA.

New Hampshire’s data projects that emissions of nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide will fall 16%, 2.7% and 1.9% from 2022 to 2026 even without the inspection program, partly because older vehicles are being replaced by cleaner ones, according to the proposal.

All 12 of the state’s air monitoring sites measured ozone at or below 65 parts per billion from 2022 to 2024, under the federal limit of 70 parts per billion, the agency said.