Clean air fight

The looming fight over revisions to the Clean Air Act has become a conflict of regions, with the upwind Midwest guarding its right to continue to pump out cheap, dirty coal-fired power and the downwind Northeast pushing for tighter controls. Maine will need a coordinated effort from its congressional delegation and governor’s office to ensure that the state’s interests are well represented.

The Environmental Protection Agency, directed by Congress to review its air-pollution rules every five years, has proposed tougher standards for two of the six major pollutants. They would reduce the size and concentrations of particulate matter, which contributes to breathing problems, including asthma and bronchitis. And they would cut allowable levels of ozone, the primary component of smog, and while changing the duration of measurements from one hour to an eight-hour average.

To complicate this issue, states along the Eastern Seaboard (through the Ozone Transport Commission) and a wider panel of the 36 easternmost states (the Ozone Transport Assessment Group) are devising cooperative ways to meet current standards. The latter group is expected to submit a report June 19 on its conclusions, one month before the EPA submits its Clean Air Act changes. The difficulty is in balancing the Midwest’s desire to keep operating its coal-burning power plants with the Northeast’s desire for cleaner air.

The EPA proposal could affect both Maine’s environment and its economy. Federal regulations on air pollution restrict development in areas at or near nonattainment levels for pollution. Most of Maine’s pollution blows in from the west. Cleaner industry in Pennsylvania or Ohio would give Maine more flexibility in developing its economy.

Gov. Angus King has supported the new EPA standards, with the provision that upwind states control emissions in advance of the states downwind. Other Northeast governors, including George Pataki of New York, Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and William Weld of Massachusetts, have supported the measures. Maine Reps. John Baldacci and Tom Allen have signed a letter of support. Maine’s senators, however, have been too quiet. Midwestern senators have been lobbying colleagues hard to persuade them to oppose the new proposals. If their Northeastern colleagues do not stand up to them, no one will.

The EPA rules are primarily about improving the air, but as the battle shaping up in Congress demonstrates, it also is about treating all regions of the country fairly. The Northeast needs to ensure that its residents won’t be breathing dirtier air because of successful lobbying from the Midwest.