BISMARCK — North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and 21 other Republican governors called Thursday for the Environmental Protection Agency to pause its new rule that limits fine particles in the air.

In a Thursday, April 11 letter addressed to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, the governors wrote the new rule will hit rural communities the hardest. The rule, which changes the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for fine particulate matter, is scheduled to take effect May 6.

“The EPA wants to move the goal posts on these air toxic standards,” Burgum said this week during a meeting of the Energy Development and Transmission Committee. “When they move those goal posts, they are taking it to just unbelievable levels.”

Rural communities and businesses will be forced to make air quality changes at a higher cost per capita than other areas and will struggle to meet the standards, the governors wrote.

“This one-size-fits-all rule is the wrong approach and particularly burdensome to states like North Dakota where air quality is frequently degraded by wildfire smoke from western states and Canada that is beyond our control,” Burgum said in a news release. “This new EPA standard ignores the progress made in reducing particulate matter over the last 20 years and threatens to drive up costs for industry and consumers and damage our economy.”

The governors also estimated that 20% of U.S. counties will be deemed non-compliant once the rule goes into effect, the letter said.

The EPA said the rule protects “millions of Americans from harmful and costly health impacts, such as heart attacks and premature death,” according to the agency’s website.

The EPA also said particle, or soot, pollution is one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution.

In addition to Burgum, the letter was signed by the Republican governors of: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

This story was originally published on NorthDakotaMonitor.com