FENCES Act

Key Points

• This bill, called the FENCES Act, changes how the government tracks air pollution. It says that if a city or county has dirty air because of pollution blowing in from another country, they should not be punished with federal labels or penalties.
• Currently, the government can label an area as "failing" if its air doesn't meet safety standards. This bill would stop that label if a state can prove the area would have passed the test if not for pollution coming from outside the United States, whether that pollution was caused by humans or natural events.
• The bill protects states from expensive federal fines and sanctions if they fail to meet air quality goals for ozone or dust because of things they cannot control. This includes smoke from wildfires or exhaust from vehicles that the state does not have the legal power to regulate.
• To keep these protections, states must show they are doing everything within their power to clean up the pollution they actually control. They would also have to submit a new report every five years to prove that outside pollution is still the main reason they are failing to meet air standards.
• The goal of this change is to prevent local businesses and taxpayers from being hit with high costs or strict regulations for air quality problems that are created in other countries and drift across the border.

Impact Analysis

Govbase has not yet run an impact analysis on this legislation.