"When the Trump administration exempted parts of the Chicago area last year from federal limits on lung-damaging smog, it delivered a huge financial break to steel mills, chemical plants and other industries that are some of the region’s biggest polluters.
Scott Pruitt, who at the time headed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, also freed the Foxconn Technology Group from spending millions of dollars on pollution-control equipment as it builds a new electronics plant in southeast Wisconsin, just north of the Illinois border in an area with some of the region’s dirtiest air.
But faced with a legal challenge from environmental groups and a coalition of cities and states, including Chicago and Illinois, federal lawyers are having second thoughts about Pruitt’s controversial decision.
In a few densely worded paragraphs buried at the end of a 63-page document, attorneys for the EPA and Justice Department asked a federal appeals court this month for what, in legal terms, amounts to a do-over."
Michael Hawthorne reports for the Chicago Tribune May 28, 2019.
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