The EPA announced it will reconsider its 2008 national smog standards. The agency plans to stay the current standards in the interim, while attainment and non-attainment areas are assessed.

Didn't click on the link? Fine. To sum up:

• The agency will have its new proposal by December
• The final standard will be completed by August next year.
• The 2008 regulation will remain in place
• Attainment and non-attainment areas are still being assessed

This is political, right?

Well, um, yes?

I mean, it's Washington, right?

The 2008 smog standards was one of the most closely watched rulemaking processes of the Bush-era EPA. Environmentalists saw it as the perfect Bush storm: science says one thing, industry says another, and the president tries to engineer a compromise.

Of course, things are never that simple.

First of all, the football was more accurately in the hands of Bush's then-EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, after being punted by the Supreme Court. SCOTUS ruled in Whitman v. American Trucking Associations Inc. that the agency had to re-write its rules.

In the run-up to the rule, there were rumored disagreements between the White House, represented by the Office of Management and Budget. Generally, OMB had industry's interests closest to heart, and Johnson, who attained his position through the ranks as an EPA scientist, was more inclined to rely on the results of the EPA's research.

Environmentalists wanted a standard set between 60 and 70 parts per billion (ppb), consistent with the EPA's Children's Health Advisory Committee's recommendation of 60 ppb, and the EPA science advisory board's unanimous recommendation of a standard between 60 and 70 ppb. Industry wanted to keep as close to the contemporary 80-ppb standard, but realistically, about 75 ppb was the best they could hope for.

The president gave Johnson the final say, although at the last minute Bush asked his EPA chief to go with a less stringent approach for a secondary designation (see below: "Primary? Secondary?")

In the end, Johnson held firm on his decision to keep both designations at the same level: 75 ppb. The president stood behind Johnson's decision. This all went down in March 2008.

Enter President Obama, and new EPA chief Lisa P. Jackson, who want to know why the advisors' recommendation was ignored. Again, the EPA Chief has the football, as Jackson made clear in statements to the press during the announcement.   The message from Jackson is that this is not a political football; it's about an unexplained incongruence between the agency's Science Advisory Board, and its final regulatory standard. Of course, it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to think of "incongruence" as "political manipulation."

I do not think that calling out its predecessors is the overarching goal. But let's be honest: raise your hand if you think Jackson's going to review all the old data and reveal to the nation that Johnson's 75-ppb standard was entirely scientific and sound? Right. There's politics written all over this football, and there's a good chance there were politics all over it when "60 to 70" turned into "75, but it's okay because we didn't leave some guys at 80."

What has changed?

While the EPA goes back over its research that led to the 2008 decision, and takes commentary, the testing will go on – it is assumed that the agency's attainment data can be reapplied to the new standard. However, state agencies' efforts toward smog-controlling regulations have been halted.

For industry, it's not much of a stay of execution. Jackson is emphasizing a speedy turnaround, followed by a same or, more likely more stringent rule.

Primary? Secondary?

In the lead-up to its 2008 designations, the EPA under President George W. Bush introduced separate designations for "primary" and "secondary" levels, with the implication that the two may be set at different levels. This did not come to pass; in the final regulations both levels remained the same. "Primary" designates air quality standards to protect public (read: "human") health, including sensitive groups, such as children and people with asthma. The secondary standard is set to protect public welfare and the environment, including protection against visibility impairment, damage to animals, crops, vegetation, and buildings.

At the time, the translation of this went something like: "if there aren't any people in a certain area, do we really need the tighter smog standard?" Practically, the sense was that for some areas (National Parks, the Great Lakes? – it never went far enough to say, really), a secondary standard of maybe 80 ppb still would be acceptable. It wasn't an advisory board idea, in fact environmentalists alleged it came directly from a conservative think tank as a workaround the advisory board's recommendation.

The EPA did not say whether it plans to create separate standards for either designation this time. But this idea of separate standards might be used to reduce the primary standard while leaving the secondary standard at 75 ppb.