Air Regulatory Efficiency and Streamlining Effort (EASE)

The Office of Air Quality (OAQ) engaged in a series of consensus-driven stakeholder discussions, with the ultimate goal of preparing a regulatory package for initiation with the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission (APC&EC or “Commission”) to harmonize and streamline Arkansas's air quality regulations and present a state implementation plan (SIP) package for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approval to demonstrate that the streamlined regulations satisfy federal Clean Air Act requirements.

Primary goals for the effort were:

• to remove or update outdated provisions including references to programs that no longer exist, provisions that are no longer applicable, facility names that have changed, and vacated and/or stayed provisions,
• to resolve inconsistencies between Rules 18, 19, 26, and 31 and State statutes, other APC&EC rules, and federal rules, and
• to increase efficiency in future permitting and regulatory revision actions.

EASE Collaborative

In 2018, the OAQ sought comment on a strawman draft of a consolidated rule. In response to stakeholder feedback, the OAQ established the Regulatory Efficiency and Streamlining Effort (EASE) Collaborative, which was open to members of the public, to explore options to further clarify and otherwise streamline existing air quality rules.

As a result of the collaborative process, OAQ developed an updated version of Rule 19 that was submitted to the Commission for adoption, and the Arkansas SIP was updated to reflect changes to Rule 19. The EASE-led revisions to Rule 19 were adopted by the Commission and became effective May 6, 2022. A SIP revision reflecting the revisions to Rule 19 was submitted to EPA on June 22, 2022.