Ohio hammered by new smog regulations

By Randall Edwards and Roger K. Lowe , Dispatch Staff Reporters Copyright 1998 Columbus Dispatch September 25, 1998

Ohio has five years to cut smog-producing nitrogen oxide emissions by more than a third, U.S. EPA Administrator Carol Browner said yesterday.

Ohio, which has many older, coal-burning electric power plants, will be among the states hardest hit by the Environmental Protection Agency's final regulations for an anti-smog program.

The new rules affect 22 states and the District of Columbia, and the EPA estimates they will cost $ 1.7 billion a year to implement.

Americans may pay up to $ 1 a month more in their electric bills, Browner said, but 138 million people living in the eastern United States will breathe cleaner air. About 31 million of them will - for the first time - breathe air that meets a smog standard approved last year, she said.

Also, the regulations represent the first federal effort to reduce the transport of wind-borne, smog-producing ozone across state lines, Browner said.

''This action will help prevent thousands of cases of smog-related illnesses, like bronchitis and exacerbated cases of childhood asthma each year. This plan has real benefits for real people,'' she said.

Ohio EPA officials and representatives of Columbus-based American Electric Power said the new rules were too costly, the deadlines impractical and the benefits to public health not as great as they could be for the money. American Electric Power is one of the nation's largest power producers.

States can decide how to make the cuts, but the most likely targets are coal-burning power plants and other large industrial sources. In Ohio, utilities will have to cut emissions by 85 percent and most would have to install expensive technology to do it, said John McManus, manager of environmental strategy and planning at American Electric Power.

The EPA estimates it will cost $ 1,500 a ton to reduce smog at the smokestack, compared with $ 2,000 to $ 10,000 a ton for other alternatives such as controlling pollutants from automobile tailpipes. McManus argues, however, that the agency is ignoring that smog is generally an urban problem, and many power plants are in remote areas.

''They're determining cost-effectiveness by the ton, not by what it costs to achieve an air-quality benefit,'' he said.

Environmentalists, however, said Ohioans would both pay more and benefit more.

''This is a major step toward improving air quality in Ohio,'' said Kurt Waltzer, a spokesman for the Ohio Environmental Council. ''If we reduce power plant emissions by 85 percent, we'll reduce our ozone (smog) days by 97 percent. Since May, we've seen 40 days in Ohio when we exceeded federal air quality standards.''

Overall, the regulations will reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 1.1 million tons a year, or 28 percent, by 2007. But the controls to cut these emissions must be in place by 2003.

Ohio will need to reduce its emissions of smog-producing nitrogen oxide by 36 percent by 2003. Ohio and Indiana must make the second-largest reduction among the states covered by the regulations. West Virginia has to cut its emissions by 51 percent.

Browner said the EPA's cost-benefit analysis showed that the regulations will cost $ 1.7 billion a year but that the benefits from cleaner air are worth $ 3.4 billion a year.

''I am very disappointed that the federal EPA has once again chosen a heavy-handed, punitive approach over sound science and reasonable regulation,'' Gov. George V. Voinovich said in a statement.

The alternative proposal by Ohio and five other Midwestern states would have made some cuts in power plant emissions but would have looked for other sources of smog as well, said Robert Hodanbosi, chief of the Ohio EPA's division of air pollution control.

Hodanbosi said the state has only a year to develop a plan to meet the standard and ''I don't know if we can do such a large control program in a year.''

States that don't meet clean-air standards face sanctions from the U.S. EPA that can include a ban on new industry emission permits and a loss of federal highway dollars. Hodanbosi said the state, the utilities and any other affected party could challenge the rules in court.

The U.S. EPA did agree to some changes to its original proposal:

The initial regulations likely would have required some pollution controls on 13,000 businesses or pollution sources. The final rule instead probably will cover about 1,000 power plants and large industrial plants throughout the United States.

States also were given more flexibility to decide how to meet their targets, and the EPA also extended the deadline slightly.

States also are given more authority to deal with brownouts in the summer.

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