Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

13. Environmental Protection Agency · Minor

Adopt policies preventing abuse of the CAA error correction authority

Not started

425 13. Environmental Protection Agency

“Adopt policies to prevent abuse of EPA’s CAA “error correction” authority. EPA historically has used this to coerce states into adopting its favored policies on pain of imposition of a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP).”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    EPA has used its Clean Air Act error correction authority in this window and has adopted no policy limiting it. The two error-correction actions on the record — a proposed and then final finding of failure to attain the 2006 particulate standards in California's San Joaquin Valley — run in the opposite direction from the guardrail the Quote asks for.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Negative search (2026-08-27): the only Federal Register documents in the window using EPA’s error correction authority are the San Joaquin Valley PM2.5 findings of failure to attain, proposed 2026-04-02 and finalized 2026-06-11 — the agency exercising the authority, not constraining it.
  • The Quote asks for policies preventing abuse of the authority. None has been published.
  • Unified Agenda, read 2026-09-01. We read EPA’s full Unified Agenda on reginfo.gov (214 entries across the active, long-term and completed stages), because the Federal Register prints only the entries that need a Regulatory Flexibility analysis, and the 2026-08-27 negative was taken from that abbreviated version. Nearest entry: RIN 2006-AA03, Revision and Promulgation of Implementation Plans; Texas; Regional Haze FIP; Disapproval and Error Correction … (EPA Region 6, Long-Term Actions, 40 CFR 52, 78 and 97): https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202510&RIN=2006-AA03, where EPA “continues to evaluate next steps on this action following a change in Administration in January 2025”. Like the San Joaquin findings, it is the agency exercising the error correction authority in one case, not a policy constraining it. No RIN on the agenda constrains the authority.
Action
restrict
Object
EPA Clean Air Act “error correction” authority
ID
1073