The Environmental Protection Agency agreed Thursday with many claims by Colorado air pollution employee whistleblowers that the state was issuing permits without proper modeling or review, and recommended revision of at least 11 permits in dispute.

Three Air Pollution Control Division employees filed a complaint with the EPA’s Office of Inspector General last year saying their managers endangered the health of Coloradans by unlawfully approving noxious gas permits for companies without federally mandated modeling or monitoring.

They said their leaders ordered them in mid-March 2021 to stop performing modeling required by the Clean Air Act. The whistleblowers, who run the state computer models to predict how much pollution will result from a company’s activities, say their managers bypassed modeling rules in order to speed permits and avoid a paper trail in the event the state was sued by environmental groups.

Leadership of the air pollution division has since changed hands, and the EPA’s report on the complaints Thursday acknowledged Colorado has already agreed to implement some of the recommendations in its modeling and permitting program.

“We have identified important concerns with the state’s implementation of the … minor source permitting program,” according to the report on the whistleblowers’ objections, which were handled by the Region 8 EPA office headed by KC Becker.

The state’s failure to consider potential air quality violations modeled by the employees is...

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