N.C. renews bid to cut air pollution

The state revives a battle with EPA over pollution that blows in from other states

North Carolina wants federal air regulators to require power plants to cut pollution that is wafting into the state and is renewing a legal bid to force 13 states to curb pollution.

The state attorney general and two environmental organizations filed a motion Monday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for an immediate hearing.

The filing revives a long-running legal battle that Attorney General Roy Cooper has had with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over federal policy for combating air pollution from surrounding states.

"North Carolina is leading the fight for clean air because it's critical to our health and our economy," Cooper said Monday in an interview. "Our petition to the EPA, coupled with our lawsuit against TVA, can reduce significantly the air pollution coming into our state from coal-fired utility smokestacks."

Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emitted from power plants form fine particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs and cause breathing problems. Nitrogen oxides also contribute to ground-level ozone, commonly called smog.

In 2004, North Carolina's attorney general first filed a petition under the "good neighbor" provision of the federal Clean Air Act. The law requires states to prevent their emissions from harming another state's air. About a third of North Carolina's counties do not meet federal standards for ozone or fine particle pollution, and Cooper's office contends a main culprit is out-of-state emissions.

North Carolina asked the EPA to declare that pollution from 13 Southeastern and Midwestern states contributes to North Carolina's air problems and require reductions. In 2005, the EPA denied the petition, ruling that broader federal air regulations -- the Clean Air Interstate Rule -- would cut pollution in 28 Eastern states and relieve the concerns raised by North Carolina.

The state and environmental groups appealed. But a federal court put the appeal on hold in February while it considered a separate challenge to the national pollution regulations that dealt with similar air issues.

Last month, the appeals court struck down the broader federal air regulations designed by the Bush administration, saying they were flawed.

North Carolina was among the parties that had challenged parts of the rules -- raising the ire of some environmentalists who considered the administration's flawed rules better than none at all.

In its decision, the court said states still had the option of petitioning the EPA to gain relief from pollution blowing across borders from neighboring states.

"Now that the court has struck down the CAIR rules, our petition is even more important, not only to North Carolina but to the Southeastern United States," Cooper said. "Pollution doesn't respect state boundaries. Pollution blows across all of the Southeastern U.S. This will help other states as well."

"We just want to get it back on track and get it resolved," said John Suttles, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represents the Sierra Club and Environment North Carolina.

The EPA and the Utility Air Regulatory Group, a trade group, contend that the case should remain on hold until appeals are resolved in the Clean Air Interstate Rule case.

Some environmental organizations worried that, as a consequence of the court decision last month, there could be long delays in putting more stringent pollution rules on the books. The interstate rule approach aimed to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides by 48 percent and sulfur dioxide by about 70 percent by 2025.

In its filing, lawyers for the EPA said the agency's decision to reject North Carolina's petition was based on the broader regulations going into effect. If the court's decision to throw out those regulations stands, the agency may need to re-evaluate its position on North Carolina's request, they said.

"There is no point in expending either the court's or the parties' resources on these cases until EPA can determine if it will need to re-evaluate its decision on North Carolina's petition," lawyers for the EPA and the Utility Air Regulatory Group said in a court filing.

A lawyer for the Utility Air Regulatory Group could not be reached for comment.

A decision by the federal district court in the Western District of North Carolina is pending on North Carolina's lawsuit seeking to force the Tennessee Valley Authority to cut air pollution from its coal-burning power plants in other states.