Trump Administration’s EPA Rejects Hawaiʻi’s Clean Air Plan

The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency finalized its rejection of Hawaiʻi’s Regional Haze State Implementation Plan on Friday, illegally overriding the state’s plan to clean up haze-causing pollution from aging oil-burning power plants on Hawaiʻi Island and Maui.

Without the plan, nearly 8,000 of tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, along with the fine particulate matter they form in the atmosphere, will continue to pollute the air around these plants, making skies in the state’s iconic national parks hazy, and driving asthma attacks, heart and lung disease, hospital visits, and premature death in nearby communities. Groups challenging the EPA’s action say it will harm Hawaiʻi communities and will result in dirtier air in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes and Haleakalā National Parks.

“Hawaiʻi’s stunning national parks are a showcase for some of the most unique and beautiful landscapes in the world,” said Ulla Reeves, Clean Air Program Director for the National Parks Conservation Association. “When the EPA disapproved Hawaiʻi’s plan to protect park air, they put parks, visitors and communities at risk. This action is another in a string of EPA efforts to keep dirty, old, and inefficient power plants running no matter the costs to the people and natural places those facilities harm.”

Under the Clean Air Act, states must develop plans every ten years to reduce the haze pollution that obscures views in national parks and wilderness areas. Hawaiian Electric proposed and agreed to retire plants instead of installing the required pollution controls.

“To keep fossil fuel plants running, the Trump EPA is twisting the law to override states’ ability to protect their own air and the health of the communities that will breathe it,” said Abi Vijayan, senior climate attorney for NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). “Their legal theory won’t hold up in court, but in the meantime, families will keep breathing the pollution the Clean Air Act was supposed to clean up.”

In an August 2025 letter to EPA, sent more than a year after Hawaiʻi finalized its plan, Hawaiian Electric reversed course and asked EPA to release it from its own commitments, citing speculative “grid reliability” concerns. EPA accepted those claims without independent analysis.

“Once again, the law and facts don’t matter at Trump’s EPA, which would rather protect the fossil fuel industry instead of our environment,” said Isaac Moriwake, Managing Attorney for Earthjustice’s Mid-Pacific Office, which has worked for decades to move Hawaiʻi from imported fossil fuels to clean energy. “What’s worse is that the EPA is letting HECO renege on its own promise to shut down these plants, which are among the dirtiest, most costly, and most unreliable plants in the nation.”

Hawaiʻi’s national parks are economic engines for the state. In 2024, more than 1.4 million people visited Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and more than 700,000 visited Haleakalā National Park, generating more than $400 million and $56 million in visitor spending and supporting thousands of jobs. Research shows that visitation to national parks drops by as much as 8 percent when air quality is degraded.