The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reopened public comment Monday on its proposal to fully approve the State of Alaska’s plan to improve air quality in the Fairbanks area.
The EPA says that’s because a rule in the plan drew resistance over the past couple months. That rule, which is set to take effect at the end of the year, would require homeowners to contract an energy audit for their residence before they can sell it.
In late February, local elected officials submitted formal pushback to the budding regulation. That’s when the Fairbanks City Council and Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly separately passed resolutions opposing the energy audit requirement. The bodies said it might create a bottleneck in the housing market, and they urged the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to renegotiate with the EPA.
Earlier in February, Alaska DEC Program Manager Nick Czarnecki told the Fairbanks Economic Development Corporation that the state didn’t have an out when it came to the audits. But he said, as it stands, the plan does avoid other emission control measures related to home weatherization that the EPA had asked for.
“We were able to successfully eliminate building codes and the requirements to actually do any updates, like during remodels, but then we didn’t really have any good off-ramp for the energy audits,” he said.
The state’s plan is required under the Clean Air Act because air in the Fairbanks area, particularly in North Pole, has levels of harmful particulate matter that surpass federal standards. It aims to bring the so-called nonattainment area back in line with those federal standards by 2027 using control measures meant to reduce particulate matter emissions.
The plan spent years enduring intergovernmental turbulence, including a partial disapproval from the EPA in 2023 that triggered a conformity freeze as a penalty, limiting the way local and state planners could use federal transportation funds. After the state revised the plan, the EPA then signaled it was good to go on Jan. 8, prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The initial comment period for the EPA’s proposed approval ended Feb. 7. Within days, the EPA under the new Trump administration, which includes former Alaska DEC Commissioner Emma Pokon as the EPA Region 10 Administrator, said it intended to reopen public comment on the plan due to feedback on the energy audit regulation.
The second round of public comment ends April 23. Monday’s post in the federal register says the move to extend the comment period will not impact the EPA’s evaluation of Alaska DEC’s new vehicle emissions budgets, which could lead to the so-called conformity freeze being lifted before the air quality plan gets final approval.