“On March 30, three employees of the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE) sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Inspector General Sean O’Donnell. The group alleges that CDPHE urged them to ignore violations of air quality standards in issuing permits.
In the employees’ letter, which was submitted through the organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), they claim that on March 15, CDPHE enacted a rule prohibiting “air quality modeling staff from reviewing NAAQS compliance for hourly Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) limits, 3-hour standards for SO2, and daily standards for particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5).” The decision ruled that the APCD’s new policy would be that “NAAQS compliance in air permit applications will no longer be verified” for the above standards, according to the employees’ letter.”
