A bill to require the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a program under which the Administrator shall defer the designation of an area as a nonattainment area for…
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This bill requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish the Early Action Compact Program, which allows an area that is not attaining the eight-hour ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) to obtain a deferment of a nonattainment designation upon the relevant state, local, and tribal government voluntarily developing an early action compact plan. The eight-hour ozone NAAQS measures ozone levels over eight-hour periods to determine the amount of ground-level ozone (i.e., smog) in the environment.
The EPA (1) must issue a decision on each early action compact plan no later than one year after it is submitted, and (2) may not designate an area as a nonattainment area until it has issued a decision to approve or deny a plan.
Under the bill, the EPA must establish separate requirements relating to winter ozone levels for each early action compact plan.
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
- Introduced in Senate Formatted Text PDF Formatted XML
Cite this page
U.S. Congress. (2026). S. 1973: A bill to require the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a program under which the Administrator shall defer the designation of an area as a nonattainment area for purposes of the 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standard if the area achieves and maintains certain standards under a voluntary early action compact plan, and for other purposes.. 116th Congress. Open America. https://openamerica.io/bill/116-S-1973/
"S. 1973: A bill to require the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a program under which the Administrator shall defer the designation of an area as a nonattainment area for purposes of the 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standard if the area achieves and maintains certain standards under a voluntary early action compact plan, and for other purposes.." 116th Congress, 2026, Open America, https://openamerica.io/bill/116-S-1973/.
S. 1973, 116th Cong. (2026), https://openamerica.io/bill/116-S-1973/.
[S. 1973: A bill to require the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a program under which the Administrator shall defer the designation of an area as a nonattainment area for purposes of the 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standard if the area achieves and maintains certain standards under a voluntary early action compact plan, and for other purposes.](https://openamerica.io/bill/116-S-1973/)