Clean Air for the Charlotte Area: An Action Agenda
In April 2004, EPA designated all or part of eight Charlotte area counties as “nonattainment” under the Clean Air Act because they violate federal air quality standards for ozone. Agency officials must now develop plans to clean up the area’s ozone pollution problems by June 2010 and maintain healthy air for the following 20 years. In addition to ozone, fine particle pollution continues to be a significant threat to public health in the Charlotte area. The purpose of this report is to promote an action agenda for citizens, the business community and local officials in the Charlotte area to achieve clean air, while enhancing the overall quality of life in the region.
North Carolina has made important recent progress in addressing pollution from power plants and other “stationary sources.” But more needs to be done on this front to reach air quality goals. In addition, we must aggressively address the problem of pollution from cars, trucks and other “mobile sources,” the largest and fastest-growing contributor to ozone pollution in the Charlotte area. Local elected officials responsible for transportation and land use planning, working together with state and federal officials responsible for air quality planning, must ensure that motor vehicle pollution does not undermine the effort to achieve healthful air quality.
Roadmap for the Future
The Charlotte area stands at a crossroads. One road – continued unmanaged growth, the failure to promote transportation options and a diversity of community living choices, and the lack of regional coordination on air, transportation and land use decision-making will lead to erosion of the region’s quality of life, serious public health impacts due to air pollution, and even the risk of losing federal highway expansion funds. The other road – a coordinated regional effort to improve air quality, transportation and land use planning – leads to healthy air and an improved overall quality of life for the region’s citizens. The recommendations outlined below to address both mobile and stationary sources will help the area meet the nonattainment challenge:
Mobile source solutions
Implement innovative transportation and land use solutions already in existence
North Carolina and the Charlotte region have already done good work in beginning to address mobile source pollution. Efforts such as the “Breathe Stake Holder Group” which developed measures to reduce smog should be funded; proposals like those of the Mecklenburg County Air Quality Agency to reduce driving through high ozone days should be implemented; and the Sustainable Environment for Quality of Life (SEQL) program should be strengthened. These efforts and others provide a good base on which to build to ensure clan air is achieved.
Establish a regional Metropolitan Planning Organization
Currently four separate MPOs are responsible for transportation planning within the Charlotte area. While efforts to streamline this planning has been begun, consolidating these into one MPO representing the entire nonattainment area would foster a unified effort to meeting the region’s transportation and air quality challenges. Under this approach, all jurisdictions in the nonattainment area could to work together to ensure that the new ozone standard is met by the 2010 deadline, avoiding Clean Air Act sanctions including the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of highway construction funding.
Focus transportation funding priorities on alternatives to auto travel
Because no city can devote enough money to highways to build itself out of congestion, citizens and decision makers should carefully scrutinize proposed expansions to the highway network to ensure that such projects serve existing transportation needs and do not simply encourage more sprawling development. Other strategies, including current mass transit improvements being made in Charlotte, as well as workplace incentive programs, prioritizing highway repairs over expansions, and improving traffic flow through enhanced street connectivity and design, should also be explored.
Apply a regional approach to land use planning
Localities in the Charlotte area should create an intergovernmental agency and adopt ordinances to coordinate land use, transportation and air quality planning to achieve regional goals. to ensure that their decisions are in the best interest of the Charlotte area as a whole; for example, that a major new development project in a particular location is consistent with achieving the region’s air quality goals. By joining together in this way, leaders in the Charlotte area would be leading the state in creating an innovative model that combines economic development with sensible policies to clear the air and improve the region’s mobility and overall quality of life.
Stationary source solutions
Maintain a strong NSR program
Proposed regulations would gut the longstanding New Source Review program, which was designed to ensure that the oldest, most polluting coal-fired power plants install modern pollution controls when facilities are upgraded. Because there are several such plants in the Charlotte area, abandoning this program would take away a crucial tool to help clean the air. North and South Carolina are currently in the process of revising the state NSR regulations in response to the federal changes. These states should maintain their current rules and resist pressure from EPA and industry to weaken the NSR program.
Demand full and faithful implementation of CAIR
The Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) finalized in March 2005, is the main federal initiative to address air pollution in the eastern US. The rule requires power plants to control their air pollution so that it does not spread to other states, preventing those other states from achieving and maintaining healthy air. If CAIR is properly implemented, cleanup at power plants in other states will reduce the amount of pollution that drifts into South Carolina and contributes to ozone nonattainment in the Upstate area. (Learn more about CAIR.)
Demand prompt EPA action on Section 126 petition
Because air pollution doesn’t recognize state lines, Section 126 of the Clean Air Act allows a state to petition EPA to find that power plants in upwind states are impeding its ability to attain air quality standards. In March 2004, the State of North Carolina filed such a petition with EPA to force cleanups at older coal-fired power plants in 13 upwind states, including South Carolina EPA had until November 18, 2004, to act on NC’s petition, a deadline that is has, so far, not met. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper has informed EPA of the state’s intent to sue the agency for its failure to comply with Section 126. But it will be up to state and local officials and citizens to keep the pressure on EPA to take action.
