WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency cleared the way Friday for regulations to limit pollution from lawn mowers, jet skis and similar small machines.
Devices that clean the engines’ emissions do not pose a safety problem, the EPA said. Without new pollution controls, engines under 50 horsepower would account for 18 percent of smog-forming emissions from mobile sources by 2020, the agency has estimated.
Opposition from Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., whose home state has two factories owned by lawn mower engine maker Briggs &Stratton Corp., has delayed rules to regulate small-engine pollution.
After first trying to bar California from implementing its own small-engine rules, Bond last year insisted on a study of whether adding pollution-reducing catalytic converters to small engines could create fire risks.
The EPA study released Friday concluded there are no such risks and said there can even be safety benefits from adding catalytic converters.
The conclusion means EPA can move forward to issue nationwide regulations for pollution from small engines. The agency also can grant California the waiver it is seeking to implement its own small-engine pollution rules.
Separately, a federal appeals court on Friday blocked the EPA from easing clean air rules on aging power plants, refineries and factories, one of the regulatory changes that had been among the top environmental priorities of the White House.
The new rules would have allowed older plants to modernize without having to install the most advanced pollution controls.
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