EPA directs 22 states to improve air quality; States in the Midwest and South must decrease nitrogen oxide emissions 28% by 2007

James Rosen, Bee Washington Bureau Copyright 1998 Fresno Bee September 25, 1998

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday directed 22 states to accelerate their anti-smog efforts, launching the government's first regional drive to reduce the summertime haze that hospitalizes thousands of people with respiratory illness.

The EPA assigned each of the 22 states a reduction level for nitrogen oxide, a main component of ozone, the air-borne pollutant that causes smog.

The states must put a plan in place by 2003 and achieve an average 28% decrease in the emission of nitrogen oxide by 2007.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner said the tougher standards are aimed at coal-powered electric utilities, which she said have largely escaped the tough controls placed on cars and other producers of air pollution.

"Large fossil-fuel-burning utility plants are a major source of the nitrogen oxide emissions that we must reduce," Browner said. "By focusing on them, we can get the greatest reductions at the lowest cost."

Browner said the tougher standards will cost $ 1.7 billion a year to implement, but will bring $ 3.7 billion in annual benefits through reduced health care costs and lost work time. She said the average electricity consumer's monthly bill will increase by a dollar, but utility officials said the added costs are unknown and could drive bills higher.

The new standards' goal is to reduce the flow of ozone across hundreds of miles, mainly along dominant wind paths from west to east. It imposes the steepest reductions in nitrogen oxide emissions on states in the Midwest and the South -- up to 51% in West Virginia -- while requiring much smaller cuts in the Northeast.

In advancing the standards, which were developed by the agency's air-quality office in Durham and at Research Triangle Park, Browner rejected vehement protests from several "upwind" states.

"North Carolina and the EPA have some significant disagreements over whether pollution from our state keeps other states from attaining the current ozone standard," North Carolina Democratic Rep. David Price said Thursday.

Extensive computer modeling showed that ozone from North Carolina contributes to smog in Richmond, Va., Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other urban centers on the eastern seaboard, said Jeff Clark, an EPA policy analyst in Durham who helped developed the standards.

North Carolina, Clark said, also gets ozone from West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. The regional plan will help all the states, he said.

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