Sponsors (2)
The bill protects border-area states and local economies from automatic nonattainment designations and federal sanctions when air pollution is driven by foreign, natural, or uncontrollable sources, but it raises health risks and may weaken domestic pollution-control incentives while increasing EPA adjudicatory burden.
States and local governments in border areas can avoid being labeled nonattainment and can avoid automatic sanctions/fees when out-of-country emissions, exceptional events, or uncontrollable mobile sources make meeting the NAAQS impossible.
Local businesses, taxpayers, and municipal budgets in affected areas face a reduced risk of federal fiscal penalties and related costs because sanctions/fees can be waived when the specified criteria are met.
Area air-quality assessments will formally account for foreign and natural sources (and certain mobile-source constraints), reducing the chance that areas are misclassified when attainment is truly beyond local control.
Communities (especially urban populations, children, and seniors) could experience longer or repeated exposure to unhealthy ozone and particulate levels if sanctions and stricter controls are deferred based on foreign or mobile-source attributions.
States might rely on the foreign‑emissions or uncontrollable-source exemptions to avoid implementing stricter domestic pollution controls, weakening incentives to reduce mobile-source emissions and effectively shifting mitigation burdens abroad.
The EPA will be required to make complex cross‑border emissions and causation determinations, increasing administrative workload and raising the risk of costly legal disputes between states and the federal government.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Allows states to block nonattainment designations and some sanctions when air quality failures are shown to result from foreign or uncontrollable emissions, with five‑year renewal requirements.
Allows states to avoid being designated nonattainment for new or revised national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) when they can show air pollution problems are caused by emissions originating outside the United States (including non‑anthropogenic sources). For certain serious ozone and particulate matter areas, it also prevents application of specified sanctions and fees if the state demonstrates the failure to attain is due to out‑of‑area emissions, exceptional events, or mobile‑source emissions beyond the state’s control while the state is fully implementing measures it can control. The bill adds a new statutory test and a five‑year renewal requirement for the demonstrations; it clarifies some existing Clean Air Act text to reflect these changes. It does not remove other obligations to pursue attainment measures under the Clean Air Act.
Official title: Amend the Clean Air Act to clarify standards for emissions emanating from outside of the United States, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 11, 2026 by Cynthia M. Lummis · Last progress February 11, 2026