State's air is better, but EPA raises bar

Much of Triangle may fail standards

The air quality in North Carolina has improved in the last decade, but government regulators say millions of people still breathe unhealthy levels of ozone, the state's most widespread air pollution problem.

New, tighter federal standards for ozone -- the primary ingredient in smog -- mean that the Triangle, Charlotte and the state's other metropolitan areas likely will return to the federal dirty air list next year.

State air quality regulators on Monday previewed a plan to recommend in March that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency include the Triangle, Charlotte, the Triad, Fayetteville, Hickory, Asheville, Rocky Mount and Greenville metropolitan areas as well as Great Smoky Mountains National Park and several other high elevation areas.

"Air quality in North Carolina definitively is getting better over time," said George Bridgers, chief air quality meteorologist with the Division of Air Quality. "But the federal standard is getting tighter."

Regulators with the EPA, who are required by law to review standards for air pollutants every five years, tightened the standards for ground-level ozone to protect public health.

Federal air regulators will designate which counties don't meet the new standard by March 2010. The counties with ozone problems will have to develop plans to improve air quality. In the ones with serious problems, that could mean new controls on factory emissions and changes in transportation plans to reduce tailpipe pollution.

The standard, stated in terms of average concentrations of ozone at ground level over an eight-hour period, is now 75 parts per billion.

Bridgers said the good news for much of the state is that by 2012, planners project, pollution controls being added to coal-burning power plants, cleaner fuels and the replacement of older vehicles with cleaner ones will lower ozone levels enough to meet the new standard.

"Based on the existing controls we have today, we show the majority of the state coming back into attainment by 2012," Bridgers said.

He said the one problem area is Charlotte, where other measures will be needed to improve air quality.

In the Triangle, counties expected to be out of compliance include Wake, Durham, Orange, Granville and Franklin, along with the most populous parts of Johnston and Chatham.

Bridgers said Nash, Edgecombe and Pitt counties narrowly missed meeting the new standard. He said if this summer is moderate in temperature and doesn't create a lot of ozone problems, it's possible those counties could meet the standard, which is based on a rolling average of air monitoring data collected over several years.

David Farren, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, an environmental advocacy group, said the number of counties that fail the standard shows that North Carolina needs to do more to improve air quality.

"We've got an ongoing air-quality challenge for the entire Piedmont crescent," Farren said. "It's the area growing more rapidly. The challenge will continue with that continued growth and the tightening standards."