Environmentalists: Air pollution report comes up short

Environmentalists: Air pollution report comes up short

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — A 10-year study of air pollution plaguing the Southeast's national parks and wilderness areas falls short of forceful recommendations on reducing power plant emissions in the region, environmentalists said Monday.

"People agree this is the world we live in, and this is what it looks like," National Parks Conservation Association official Don Barger said of the final report of the eight-state Southern Appalachian Mountains Initiative. "We were not able to come to consensus on what path to take out of it."

The 172-page report is to be formally released Thursday at the SAMI's final meeting in Asheville. States that participated in the voluntary effort are Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginian and West Virginia.

Also involved were federal officials, environmental advocates and representatives of affected industries.

The study focused on air quality in the southern Appalachians' two national parks — Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah — and eight wilderness areas: Cohutta, James River Face, Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock, Linville Gorge, Shining Rock, Sipsey, Dolly Sods and Otter Creek. Congress requires such areas be protected from new sources of air pollution.

The group's final report contains a pledge that the eight states will support national legislation to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from power plants.

Sulfur dioxide is a primary ingredient in the haze that often blankets the southern Appalachians and in acid rain. Nitrogen oxide is a major component of smog.

However, the report contains no recommendation on how soon emissions should be reduced and by how much, saying only that national legislation "should result in no less than the reductions ... represented by the (Bush) Administration's Clear Skies Initiative."

The White House's proposal would cap total output of sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxide and allow utilities to trade pollution credits among themselves. Under the plan, which has been criticized by Democrats and environmental groups as unfair and inadequate, emissions of each substance would be reduced by about 70 percent by 2018.

John Jansen, principal scientist for Atlanta-based energy giant Southern Company and a SAMI participant, said Southern — a holding company for five utilities — supports national legislation.

"We clearly say that sulfur is the first" pollutant that should be addressed, he said. "The magnitude of those reductions, that's this question of how much and how fast." He said that should be decided in the context of the federal Clean Air Act and the regional haze rules, not by SAMI.

Michael Shore, Southeast Air Quality Manager for the growp Environmental Defense and a participant in SAMI's governing body, was disappointed that no emissions-reduction plan was endorsed in the report.

"One would think that, after going through this process and after the utilities admit clearly that there are significant sulfur dioxide reductions needed to improve air quality, that they would be open-minded for policies to do that," he said. "But many of the utility companies, Southern Company in particular, are fighting stricter standards tooth and nail."

Stephen Smith, head of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said an analysis by the federal Environmental Protection Agency of the toughest anti-pollution strategy considered by SAMI participants concluded that the annual energy cost would be about $12 per household.

Smith and others praised North Carolina's decision this year to proceed with its own pol- lution reduction plan, which aims to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-fired energy plants by 70 percent by 2013.

The environmentalists said SAMI's studies showed each state is its own worst polluter.

"In the past, we've had a tendency to blame states upwind from us," Shore said. "As we clean up our air pollution, which we should, the state which will benefit most is the one that cleans it up."