U.S. EPA'S plan to cut nitrogen-oxide emissions absurd

By Schregard, Copyright 1998 Columbus Dispatch November 7, 1998

Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized its plan to lower nitrogen-oxide emissions from utilities and large industries in order to reduce the long-range transport of air pollution. The plan is onerous and unlikely to produce the desired result. I am disappointed that the good-sense alternative proposed by Ohio and five other states was largely ignored.

There are several fundamental flaws in the U.S. EPA's plan.

The science is faulty. The federal plan is based on the notion that air pollutants from the Midwest cause ground-level ozone to form in the Northeastern states. In attempting to prove this, the U.S. EPA looked at ozone levels that fit its theory and ignored those that did not. High ozone levels that occurred in the Northeast when the air was stagnant were not included in the data.

Most air pollution violations along the East Coast are caused by East Coast sources. Computer studies show Ohio industrial and utility emissions contribute less than 4 percent to smog formation along the Eastern seaboard. Placing expensive controls on Midwestern utilities and industries will not substantially improve air quality in the Northeast.

It will, however, drive up costs in the Midwest. The average residential electric bill is estimated to increase from $ 73.88 per month to $ 81.31, or 10 percent, under the U.S. EPA's plan. The Ohio residents and businesses that will bear these costs already have invested significant resources in air pollution control, with good results. All of Ohio now meets the one-hour ozone standard (120 parts per billion, measured over one hour). Northeastern states, which have done far less than Ohio because they lack the resolve to impose unpopular controls on themselves, now want us to pay even more for technology that is not likely to significantly improve their air quality anyway. The U.S. EPA's plan takes the approach, ''Let's spend the money now and check later to find out what we accomplished.''

The U.S. EPA gave the states one year to submit their plans for complying with these new requirements. This is an impossible time frame in which to examine the various control options available, assess their effects on air quality and structure a program that will cost billions of dollars to implement. The U.S. EPA indicated that it stands ready to impose a federal plan on states that fail to meet the one-year deadline. It appears that the U.S. EPA intentionally set an unreachable deadline so that the federal government can come in and usurp the states' rights under the federal Clean Air Act and enforce the U.S. EPA plan.

The plan submitted by Ohio and its five partner states took a much more rational approach. We recognized that we will need to take steps to meet the new ozone standard (80 parts per billion, measured over eight hours) and that those steps might have the additional benefit of reducing further the already small impact that our emissions have in the Northeast because of ozone transport. We proposed as a good-faith effort that utilities reduce their nitrogen-oxide emissions 65 percent by 2004, Between now and 2001, we would do the studies necessary to demonstrate what additional controls, if any, would be needed to meet the new ozone standard and reduce ozone transport.

In other words, we would make a significant investment now and study whether still higher costs are needed before imposing them.

Our plan would have achieved the new eight-hour ozone standard in the Midwest a full year sooner than the federal Clean Air Act requires, using the flexibility that President Clinton promised the states when he announced the new standard last year.

Instead, the U.S. EPA has eliminated that flexibility in favor of a Draconian plan that requires 85 percent reduction in nitrogen oxides from Midwest utilities without scientific evidence that these levels are necessary or will significantly improve air quality in the Northeast.

Ohioans deserve better than a federally imposed program that lacks both common sense and sound science, adds unnecessary costs and takes away the flexibility provided in the Clean Air Act.

Donald R. Schregardus, director
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Columbus

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