Coal mountain

The state shouldn't falter in requiring maximum reductions of air pollution from Duke Power's coal-burning power plants

July is a bad month for state legislators to consider letting a Western North Carolina power plant skate past air pollution rules. Consider that on Thursday, a typical example, smog and dust in the air restricted views in one of the state's prime tourist attractions, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

True, that pollution in the moderate range was better than the unhealthy summer air routinely observed in North Carolina before the Clean Smokestacks Act of 2002. But it surely isn't clean enough to begin rewarding power companies that have followed the law with exemptions.

Duke Power, as The N&O's Wade Rawlins reports, argues that it deserves credit for recent pollution-control improvements the company has made to its Cliffside coal plant between Asheville and Charlotte. It wants to use the gains to offset emissions from two new modern coal-burning generators. That way, legislators could help Duke Power head off a review by the U.S. Department of Interior, which oversees national parks.

Interior officials could well seek tighter, and costlier, controls on power plant pollution in an effort to prevent haze. Burning coal releases sulfur dioxide, one of the pollutants that reacts with sunlight to form low-level ozone, or smog. (Vehicle exhaust contributes to smog as well.)

At high levels, smog reduces lung capacity in healthy people and aggravates chronic respiratory diseases, such as asthma. Even at moderate levels, a National Park Service Webcam in the Smoky Mountains park showed visibility down to 23 miles, compared to 100 miles on a clear day.

Just last month, air pollution led the National Parks Conservation Association to label the park "endangered." That's discouraging in light of the hopes raised by Clean Smokestacks. On the positive side, though, it's a reminder that North Carolina can't clean up its air alone.

The region's smog-producing champ, the Tennessee Valley Authority, is working on its coal-fired power plants, but not fast enough for North Carolina. Attorney General Roy Cooper is keeping the heat on the Environmental Protection Agency to hold Tennessee and 12 other states to higher emission standards. Federal law enables states that have reduced emissions on their own to pressure other states by suing the EPA.

At a minimum, North Carolina would step down from the high ground by granting Duke Power a credit that the Clean Smokestacks Act never envisioned. Not only could that hurt the federal case, an exemption for Duke Power could be used to win exemptions for other utilities.

Lawmakers who included this rotten apple in a barrel of environmental amendments ought to take it out. North Carolina has reasonable regulations on its 14 coal-burning power plants. Until the dirty haze lifts from the Smokies and elsewhere, state leaders shouldn't bargain those regulations away.