NC's 126 Petition: Curbing pollution in 14 states
SELC sues EPA for failing to protect North Carolina from upwind pollution
©Charles Shoffner
Nearly 2,000 people in North Carolina die each year due to exposure to power plant pollution, the ninth highest rate in the country. Soot composed of microscopic particles from power plants also causes over 1,000 hospitalizations and 27,418 asthma attacks every year, 1,338 severe enough to require emergency room visits
Instead of leading the states in efforts to improve air quality, EPA has proved yet again it's more interested in providing lip service and delay. Now, SELC has filed suit against the agency for its denyal of North Carolina's request to clean up pollution from neighboring states.
On March 16, 2006, EPA denied a request by North Carolina to clean up pollution from 13 neighboring states. Instead, the agency issued a weak plan that doesn't tackle the state’s upwind pollution problem and is in violation of the Clean Air Act.
The agency's denial of the "Section 126 Petition" in March came after years of EPA delay in which the agency didn't respond at all to the state's petition. SELC and the State of North Carolina sued the agency for its inaction, which prompted EPA to finally take action. Its ultimate denial of the petition came two years after the state's original request.
In March 2004, the State of North Carolina filed a "Section 126" petition seeking to compel the EPA to force cleanups at older coal-fired power plants in thirteen upwind states. The "good neighbor" provision in Section 126 of the Clean Air Act allows a state to petition EPA for a finding that power plants in upwind states are impeding its ability to attain air quality standards. As part of a court-supervised settlement, EPA was required to take final action on the petition by March 15.
However, instead of requiring actual emissions reductions at specific upwind plants, EPA denied North Carolina's petition and issued a plan that will illegally substitute implementation of the weaker federal Clean Air Interstate Rule to remedy the state's air pollution problems.
Adopted last March, CAIR requires 28 Eastern states to clean up power plant emissions by 2015 using a cap-and-trade scheme. However, CAIR allows dirty plants to continue to operate too long before cutting their pollution, and because CAIR allows plants to trade pollution credits, plants that are polluting North Carolina's air can avoid emissions reductions by purchasing credits. Furthermore, by concentrating only on the state's soot problem, EPA's plan ignores the contribution neighboring states make to North Carolina's smog.
North Carolina is the first southern state to file a “126 petition,” a tool that has been successfully used in the past by northern states to force midwestern and southern states to curb ozone-forming emissions. Under the law, the EPA was required to act on North Carolina’s petition by November 18, 2004.
Despite having one of the strongest state air pollution laws in the country, over one-third of counties in North Carolina still do not meet federal clean air standards for ozone or soot due in part to pollution crossing its borders from Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.
According to EPA’s own analysis of pollution transport, North Carolina’s petition would eliminate 75 percent of the sulfur dioxide and nearly 70 percent of the nitrogen oxides annually from coal-burning power plants operating in the upwind states. This equates to roughly half of all sulfur dioxide pollution in the U.S.
