Smog Reduction
    Source. A recurring political dispute involves the federal EPA's effort to reduce smog emissions under the Clean Air Act. There has been a running battle between northeastern states and southern and midwestern states over air pollution emitted from the latter migrating into the former.

      The main sources of smog, or ground-level ozone, are motor vehicles, coal-fired power plants, and factories.  A helpful web site is  http://www.ozone.org/

      Reactants. The reactants of photochemical smog are nitric oxide, unburned hydrocarbons, and sunlight.  After a few hours have passed, oxidants are produced such as ozone, peroxyacetal nitrate (PAN), aldehydes, and aerosol haze.  An intermediate product is nitrogen dioxide which gives the air a brownish color and reaches peak concentration about halfway through the reaction process. this is what an airplane passenger sees residing above a city after takeoff and climbout. The smog impact of an emitted hydrocarbon is determined by its concentration and its photochemical reactivity.

     Gas guzzlers. Cars in our mobile society are considered by most Americans as essential.   In recent years sports utility vehicles (SUVs) have been in vogue. Unfortunately SUVs have not been held to the same exhaust emission standards as ordinary automobiles, producing about twice the exhaust emissions as the latter emit. The federal EPA had its sights set on changing this disparity of treatment; and so in December 1999 President Clinton announced a major emissions initiative to treat small trucks and SUVs like autos and phase-in reductiions in nitrogen oxide and soot emissions.

     He was aware that even though cars and trucks now emit 90 percent less smog than in 1970, ozone levels have declined only 30 percent in that time.  That is because more people drive more miles each year. Additionally, the 1999 EPA initiative mandated oil refiners to lower the sulfur content in gasoline, in part because sulfur clogs catalytic converters which clean car exhaust.   

    Dirty coal. Coal-fired power plants' emissions exit tall stacks.  Since the 1970s tall stacks have been the electric power industry's way to avoid NAAQS violations by dispersing the plume high into the atmosphere and away from downwind ground areas. 

      Clean Air Act amendments in 1977 mandated sulfur dioxide reductions from new power plants through use of scrubbers. Older coal-fired power plants were exempted from the emissions limits imposed by 1970, 1977, and 1990 statutes.   But, instead of retiring the old plants as Congress anticipated, the electric utility industry retained the pollution belchers. Why? The older, unregulated coal-burning plants are cash cows which take advantage of low coal prices.

     The utilities' Achilles' heel is their desire to modify their older coal-fired power plants. Under New Source Review, such changes are supposed to bring grandfathered power plants into compliance with modern pollution control standards. The coal industry is aggressively lobbying the Bush administation to dismantle the New Source Review provision of the Clean Air Act..

     According to the Environmental Working Group, between 1992 and 1998 West Virginia ranked second in increased nitrogen oxide emissions and fifth in greenhouse gas emissions. In West Virginia, according to the National Institute of Chemical Studies (NICS), fourteen power plants are by far the largest source of toxic pollution in the state and constitute roughly 85 percent of the pollutants entering the air. For 1998 three acids -- hydrochloric, hydrofluroic, and sulfuric -- accounted for 98 percent of toxic air emissions from power plants. Other toxics released were compounds of metals including small amounts of dangerous dioxins and mercury.

     While federal EPA Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reports generally document a continuing decrease in toxic pollution from West Virginia manufacturers (as affirmed by NICS reports), those improvements are undermined by massive air pollutants from coal-fired electric generating plants. TRI data always are two years behind the year of release to the public.  

     Lawsuits. American Electric Power, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, is the biggest supplier of coal-fired electric power in West Virginia. In November 1999 the EPA sued AEP for making major modifications to the Mitchell plant in Moundsville and the Philip Sporn plant in New Haven without installing equipment required to control smog, acid rain, and soot. 

      In September 1999 New York's attorney general alleged that seven coal-fire power plants in West Virginia owned either by AEP, Allegheny Energy, or Virginia Electric & Power (VEPCO)[now Dominion] made modifications without complying with federal law. A number of midwest utilities have been sued over similar allegations by the EPA and states in November 1999 filed a separate lawsuit in Columbus, Ohio, making similar allegations. Also accused in March 2000 by the federal EPA of unlawful emissions are AEP's John Amos plant, Kanawha River plant at Glascow, and Kammer plant at Moundsville.

     Dominion in November 2000 agreed to settle its case. The utility will spend $1,200,000,000 over 12 years to install equipment to cut 70 percent of emissions (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides) from eight power plants, including two West Virginia emitters -- Mount Storm at Mount Storm Lake and North Branch at Bayard.

      Economic threat? For coal-producing states, such as West Virginia, any change of the status quo is viewed as an economic threat and becomes a political issue in the halls of Congress and elsewhere.

     Even the state legislature gets involved. The 1996 Interstate Ozone Transport Oversight Act [W. Va. Code sec. 22-5-17] requires legislative approval to the terms of any agreement by the state DEP director to air pollution emission controls in addition to those specified in the Clean Air Act.

     New EPA rules. In November 1997, upon request of eight New England states, the EPA called for twenty-two states and the District of Columbia to make plans to reduce smog-causing emissions in amounts ranging from 9 percent to 44 percent (for West Virginia).

     In summer 1997 EPA revised ozone and particulate health standards for the first time in ten years.

      The EPA timetable requires states to establish plans for reducing emissions by 2003. In West Virginia total nitrogen oxide emissions must be reduced by nearly 100,000 tons by 2007.  EPA fact sheets explaining the new standards appear at its web site http://www.epa.gov/ttn/ . EPA's emission reduction rule was approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2001. The court's decision affirmed that the Clean Air Act "unambiguously bars cost considerations" in the process of setting air-quality standards.

     In December 1999 EPA acted on petitions of downwind states and ordered nearly 400 power plants and industrial boilers in 12 states to dramatically reduce smog-producing emissions.  In West Virginia the aim is to reduce total nitrogen oxide emissions by about 76 percent to 29,000 tons per year at sixteen power plants and 7 manufacturing facilities.  

     Big polluters. West Virginia ranks thirty-fifth in state population but, as to air emissions, as of 1997, was sixth for sulfur dioxide and seventh for nitrogen oxides.

     According to former EPA regional administrator Michael McCabe, "West Virginia power plants spew more nitrogen oxide into the air than all the power plants in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and the District of Columbia."  And "coal-fired power plants in the midwestern and southern states emit more than 5.5 times as much nitrogen oxide as the coal-fired power plants in the northeastern states." 

     Tons of emissions data are available from the EPA at its acid rain web site at http://www.epa.gov/...Maps showing pollution and pollution deposition data can be found at:  http://www.epa.gov/... and within "isopleths" at  http://nadp.sws.uiuc.edu/ .

          Still, although a significant polluter, because the impact of nitrogen oxides diminishes by about half every 150 miles, West Virginia may not be the bogeyman in northeastern states that it is made out to be. West Virginia's close neighbors -- Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.-- receive the brunt of this state's power plant emissions.

     Downwind. Ironically Wild and Wonderful West Virginia experiences transported air pollution from the largest emitters to the south and west: Ohio, Texas, Kentucky, Indiana, Florida, and Virginia. Power plants are the biggest emission offenders contributing about two-thirds of sulfur dioxide, 29 percent of nitrogen oxides, 36 percent of carbon dioxide, and 21 percent of mercury.

     The Ohio River Valley is particularly hard hit by emissions and may not meet the new health standards for ozone and particulate matter. While states like New York have higher peaks of ozone than does West Virginia, people in West Virginia probably breathe more ozone. 

     Technology. In recent years pollution control industries have shown that the expense of installing pollution-reducing equipment in coal-fired boilers is far less than previously thought. American ingenuity and public commitment to emission reduction can be successful. There are legitimate issues about the money states must spend for controls and upon what basis each state's financial expenditures are determined, such as upon the principle of proportionality (each state's contribution to pollution).

      Future. Power plants are in West Virginia because the coal is here.  Those plants are here to stay for the forseeable future.  Predictions of dire consequences resulting from regulating smog-causing emissions sound the biblical shepherd's cry of the wolf that isn't there. It is an old cry used in 1970 when the first federal clean air statute was enacted.  Yet, despite industry complaints,  needed improvements, aided by technology, were made and continue to be made and the country enjoys prosperity. The governing aphorism of these Chicken Littles may be this:  put off until tomorrow what you don't have to do today.

      Public health. What is needed in the smog-ozone debate is a holistic approach to cleaning up the air, instead of finger-pointing to shift costs to someone else.  We all breathe the air.  The emphasis needs to be on public health and not on corporate profits. 

      High levels of ozone in the air are unhealthy for everyone.  In West Virginia during the summer of 1998, for example, state citizens breathed unhealthy air one of every three days (as measured by monitors in Charleston, Greenbrier County, Huntington, Vienna, Weirton, and Wheeling). Similar results existed in a June 2000 report, "Smog Watch 2000," issued by the Clean Air Network.

      Persons with respiratory ailments and young children are more vulnerable to ozone than are the rest of us.  Long-term exposure to ozone can impair lungs and trigger asthma attacks and breathing problems.  According to former EPA regional administrator Michael McCabe, "about 10 to 20 percent of all respiratory-related hospital visits in the northeastern United States can be attributed to ozone pollution."
Last updated on Tuesday, July 24, 2001