EPA Orders Emission Reductions; Smog-Producing Chemicals Are Targeted in 22-State Plan

Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer Copyright 1998 The Washington Post September 25, 1998

The Clinton administration ordered Maryland, Virginia and 20 other eastern states yesterday to dramatically cut emissions of smog-forming chemicals as part of an unprecedented plan to stanch the flow of pollutants across regional boundaries.

The smog-reduction plan adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency leans heavily on utility companies to achieve a region-wide 28 percent reduction in ozone, the pollutant that aggravates asthma, causes haze and triggers "ozone alert" days in the summer.

"As a result of this plan, 138 million Americans living in the eastern U.S. will breathe cleaner air," EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner said in announcing the rules. "Of these 138 million Americans, 31 million will -- for the first time -- breathe air that meets the nation's new public health standard for harmful levels of smog."

Browner predicted that the plan, with an annual cost estimated at $ 1.7 billion, would raise the average consumer's utility bill by $ 1 a month, though the costs would likely be offset by lower rates for electricity because of the government's deregulation of the industry.

In the Washington region, both Maryland and Virginia would be required to substantially reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides, or NOx, a chemical byproduct of fossil fuel combustion and a precursor of both ozone and smog.

By 2007, Maryland would be required to slash NOx emissions by 23 percent, and Virginia by 18 percent. The District is included in the plan but is not required to make substantial cuts because it has no major industrial sources of NOx.

Maryland officials yesterday applauded the plan while Virginia criticized it as too expensive. Virginia joined several other midwestern and southern states earlier this year in proposing a less costly alternative, arguing that EPA was demanding too much too soon.

"This is a great disappointment," said John Paul Woodley Jr., Virginia's natural resources secretary. "We are concerned about the unnecessary burdens this will place on electric utilities, other industries and individual citizens," Woodley said. Virginia officials said utilities would have to lower emissions by 60 percent -- and still the state would miss the mark. To make up the difference, the state may have to require cuts in other areas, including automobile emissions.

In Maryland, officials predicted the state would benefit from cuts in pollution from other states. Baltimore suffers from some of the worst air in the country, and the state has already adopted aggressive smog-control measures, set to take effect in May, although two major utility companies have filed a lawsuit seeking to block them.

"Maryland has moved ahead," Secretary of Environment Jane T. Nishida said through a spokesman. "We encourage other states to do their fair share to make clean air an achievable goal for the entire country."

EPA's action, first proposed last October, represents an unprecedented attempt to solve the problem of long-range transport of pollutants across state and regional borders. Many states, particularly in the Northeast, attribute their smog problems to airborne pollutants that drift eastward from industrial centers in the Midwest.

Midwestern states say the claims of wind-blown pollution are exaggerated. But in multilateral negotiations last year, 37 states agreed in principle to a region-wide solution, to be designed and enforced by the EPA.

The result is a complex plan that sets individual reduction targets for the 22 eastern states, forcing each -- except Rhode Island, where no reduction is needed -- to find ways to cut NOx in amounts ranging from a few percent to about half, compared with projected emission levels in the year 2007.

Although each state must decide how the cuts would be made, the EPA plan is slanted toward achieving the bulk of the reductions from utilities and other large industrial sources. In some midwestern states, coal-burning power plants produce as much as half the NOx that travels downwind to neighboring states.

Browner said yesterday that many states could achieve their targets simply by requiring utilities to upgrade pollution controls. And to make it easier, she proposed an interstate trading system in which the dirtiest plants can buy pollution "credits" from clean-burning utilities.

"By focusing efforts on them we can get the greatest amount of reductions for the lowest cost," she said.

Several utility companies were harshly critical of the EPA plan, though environmental groups praised it.

"EPA's final rule . . . pays no more than lip service to concerns raised by more than a dozen governors, 50 members of Congress, a regional electricity planning commission and an industry," said Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute in Washington.

But the American Lung Association's chief executive, John R. Garrison, called the plan a "much-needed step to protect the lung health of every American, especially the millions of children, elderly and people with lung diseases, like asthma, who are most vulnerable to the effects of smog."

Writers R.H. Melton, Peter S. Goodman and Todd Shields contributed to this report.

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