What: In 1997 the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA)
             established new ozone standards. The EPA also placed special
             restrictions on twenty-two states in the Ohio Valley and Midwest
             regions to prevent emissions from coal-burning power plants from
             being carried into the New England States by wind currents.
             (Tennessee is one of these twenty-two states.) Both of these
             rulings were recently either struck down or placed on hold by
             Why: The regulations put into place in 1997 by the EPA were
             more restrictive than the 1990 standards. The regulations limit
             the amount of ground level ozone and fine particle pollution
             permitted. Ground level ozone is produced by nitrogen oxide(NOx)
             which is created by burning fossil fuels. Since gasoline and
             diesel are both fossil fuels, then NOx is a major component of
             automobile emissions. Several members of the trucking and fossil
             fuel industries, as well as members of the twenty-two state
             region, have challenged the regulations in Federal Court and have
             been successful in blocking the implementation of the new rules.
             In the past two months, two separate Federal Court Of Appeals
             panels have ruled that the EPA’s authority to establish clean air
             standards is not properly delegated by Congress under the Clean
             Air Act. Therefore, since the EPA is a part of the Executive
             branch of government and not the Legislative, they have no
             authority to produce regulations on their own. The plaintiffs in
             the case also argued that the amount of pollution a person can
             tolerate has not been established and until it is the EPA should
             not make the current regulations more restrictive.
             How: The main actors in this event are the American
             Trucking Associations and their fellow plaintiffs, the twenty-two
             state coalition, the EPA, and the Federal Appeals Court.
             Why would the American Trucking Associations and other
             fossil fuel burning industries want to...