It's up to us to clean up our own skies

EDITORIAL

It's up to us

to clean up

our own skies

U, oh.
We thought the blame belonged to them.
Outsiders.
Turns out, we may be responsible for our own air pollution problems.

For more than a decade, we in Virginia had assumed that the air pollution that had ruined our views from the Blue Ridge Mountains had drifted in from the Midwest's coal-fired power plants. Indeed, scientists suggested that very thing, based among other things on an analysis of prevailing winds from the plants' direction.

But scientists set out to make certain of that hypothesis.

They now know that Midwestern plants are not the source of much of our pollution.

Instead, much of the haze often smothering the southern Appalachians comes from sulfur dioxide spewed by our region's very own power plants.

In addition to Virginia, states participating in the voluntary program were Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. Also involved were federal officials, environmental advocates and representatives of affected industries.

The study focused on air quality in the region's two national parks — Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah — and eight wilderness areas, including the James River Face in Virginia and Dolly Sods and Otter Creek in West Virginia.

Congress requires such areas to be protected from new sources of air pollution.

Already there's a battle over how to accomplish that. Among other issues, environmentalists and industrialists seem to be at odds over reducing sulfur dioxide emissions or nitrogen oxide emissions or both — and how much.

The study report, however, does not recommend how to cut pollution. It merely says that whatever is done should at least equal President Bush's proposal (emphasis ours).

That proposal would cap total output of sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxide and allow utilities to trade pollution credits among themselves. Emissions of each substance would be reduced by about 70 percent by 2018.

Environmentalists and the president's Democratic foes have criticized the plan as inadequate. The head of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said that even the toughest anti-pollution strategy considered by study participants would add only $12 per year to the average household's energy costs, according to an analysis by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Meanwhile, park personnel at the Great Smokies aren't waiting. Last week they began a two-week study of tailpipe emissions from all those vehicles that enter the popular park. They want to know how much pollution is caused by nitrogen oxide from automobile exhaust.

This is taking the localized approach a step further. Park officials apparently aren't content to just blame Southern industries any more than Midwestern ones; they want to know how the park's own traffic contributes to the problem.

North Carolina isn't waiting either. It decided this year to proceed with its own anti-pollution plan, aiming to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-fired energy plants by 70 percent — five years ahead of the president's deadline.

Michael Shore, Southeast air quality manager for the Environmental Defense group and a study participant, accurately summed it up this way: "As we clean up our air pollution — which we should — the state which will benefit most is the one that cleans it up."