Scrubbed clean

The Clean Smokestacks Act is having a good effect on air quality as North Carolina's first power plant scrubber starts up

Julia Quillinan does not need high-tech monitoring equipment to know something has changed at the Progress Energy power plant near her western North Carolina home. Her nose is enough. "I know it doesn't smell in the mornings," she told The News & Observer's Wade Rawlins. "In the mornings it used to be bad. It's really nice now."

What's missing from Quillinan's mountain mornings is the rotten-egg odor of sulfur dioxide, often noticeable near traditional coal-fired power plants. The plant south of Asheville is the company's first in the state to be equipped with scrubbers to remove sulfur dioxide from smokestack emissions.

Sulfur dioxide does more than stink. It contributes to respiratory problems in vulnerable people, including the very young and very old, as well as contributing to the acid rain and white haze that have had such dramatic and damaging effects on mountain views and plant life.

The new technology has not come cheap. Progress Energy estimates it cost $82 million to outfit scrubbers at the first of its seven coal-fired plants.

Progress had the money to spend on the scrubber because of a unique compromise worked out between the state and electric utility companies in 2002. Rather than requiring the companies to reduce rates as they paid off their debts, the state allowed them to keep rates at their 2002 levels and use the extra money to pay for environmental improvements.

The Clean Smokestacks Act of 2002 has put North Carolina well ahead of federal anti-pollution regulations. The law requires a 77 percent statewide cut in nitrogen oxide by 2009 and a 73 percent cut in sulfur dioxide by 2013. Progress says that by the time a second scrubber comes on line next summer at the plant near Asheville, emissions of sulfur dioxide there will be reduced by an impressive 93 percent.

North Carolina has been working aggressively to improve air quality in the state, but there is only so much improvement possible unless upwind states do more. Prevailing winds and less-rigid environmental regulations combine to bring pollution from the Midwest into and over our mountains.

The federal government has been slow to enact strict pollution controls as North Carolina has done. The feds allow utilities in other states to buy and sell pollution credits. The result is dirty air continuing to blow into the state.

Attorney General Roy Cooper has threatened to bring suit against other states and federal environmental regulators to hurry along efforts to reduce out-of-state pollution making its way into North Carolina. He is on the right track.

North Carolina's Clean Smokestacks Act offers a blueprint for how to get industry and government working toward the same goal of improving air quality. And the evidence shows the strategy is working.

For example, the last two summers have seen a noticeable improvement in air quality in the Triangle and fewer days when the ozone level was dangerous. An 80 percent reduction in the level of nitrogen oxide coming from the Progress Energy plant in Person County is believed to have a lot to do with that.

Progress Energy plans to build sulfur dioxide scrubbers at five of its seven coal-fired plants. Duke Power has two scrubbers under construction now and plans to add them to four of its power plants. The price tag is expected to reach $2 billion.

That's money that is coming from utility customers. But as more equipment comes on line and the air grows cleaner and clearer, the price is likely to seem more and more like the bargain it already appears to be.