California environmental regulators shot back at the Trump administration on Tuesday for accusing the state of not doing enough to improve its air quality, saying the problem was largely the federal government’s own doing.

Richard Corey, executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has long failed to establish strong nationwide pollution rules that would make it easier for states to ensure cleaner air.

Corey also questioned the seriousness of the federal government’s critique of California, noting that many of the air quality issues raised in a letter sent to the state on Monday go back decades and are simply procedural.

“The letter from the EPA contains multiple inaccuracies, omissions and misstatements,” Corey said in a prepared statement. “EPA has unclean hands: It sat on these documents for years and is now pounding the table about paperwork issues of its own creation.”

The comments are just the latest in the ongoing back-and-forth between the Trump administration and California over environmental regulation. The recent flare-up, though, may have higher stakes.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, in Monday’s letter to the Air Resources Board, warned that the state could lose billions of dollars in federal highway funds if it doesn’t submit required pollution plans properly.

Wheeler explained that California had “failed to carry out its most basic tasks under the Clean Air Act” while remarking that the state had the dirtiest air in the nation. The EPA letter takes issue specifically with 130 “State Implementation Plans,” essentially strategies to address pollution in particular places, that are not in compliance with federal rules.

Wheeler wrote that the plans, which generally address high levels of one of six pollutants such as smog-forming ozone and dirty particulate matter, have “fundamental issues related to approvability, state-requested holds, missing information or resources.”

The EPA’s letter demands that the Air Resources Board commit to rescinding the State Implementation Plans by Oct. 10 and work with the agency to develop new ones.

While California has historically been dogged by high levels of pollution, particularly in Los Angeles and the Central Valley, state regulators disagreed that the new air quality plans were a solution.

Air Resources Board officials said, as far as they knew, California’s State Implementation Plans were up to date, and it was up to the federal government to request changes.

“We will continue to do work with EPA ... but EPA also needs to do its job and protect air quality,” Corey said.

California’s pollution problem is the product of the millions of automobiles, as well as factories and farms, that spew airborne pollutants and greenhouse gases. The state’s landscape, with its tall inland mountains and warm weather, tends to trap and concentrate pollution.

Monday’s threat from the EPA follows the agency’s announcement last week that it was revoking California’s authority to set automobile emissions standards that are stricter than those of the federal government. The state has since sued the administration to reverse that action.

While Corey said the state would have a hard time meeting its obligations under the Clean Air Act without stricter automobile rules, critics of the administration noted the irony in the EPA’s weakening of automobile rules on one hand while panning California for not doing enough on air quality on the other.

Many said the federal government was simply aggravating the state because it could.

“California has done more than any other state, including the EPA, for clean air,” said Margo Oge, a former director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality. “President Trump’s punitive action against California is nothing more than a 2-year-old throwing a temper tantrum.”

The federal government has the power to withhold a state’s federal highway funds if the state is not adequately addressing pollution, but it’s not something that federal officials have done in recent decades, if ever.

California Democrats also attacked the EPA’s demands Tuesday.

“The Trump administration’s threat to withhold California’s highway funding over clean air quality reports is the height of hypocrisy,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “California doesn’t need to be lectured by an administration beholden to polluters.”

A spokesman for the EPA said Tuesday that the agency’s move is part of a nationwide effort to bring state pollution practices up to date. More than one-third of the State Implementation Plans in the country that are out of compliance are in California.

Many other states also have inadequate plans but haven’t been notified of the problems, the spokesman said. He said they would be contacted.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander