EPA rule on coal will help Georgia

By June Deen and Rebecca Watts Hull


Did you know we get pollution from Pennsylvania here in Atlanta? Surprising, but true.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently analyzed the movement of coal plant pollution throughout the U.S. Turns out 10 states send tons of pollution to Georgia every year. Georgia can’t stop them from doing that. But EPA can.

EPA has proposed a “good neighbor” rule, called the Clean Air Transport Rule, that would cut power plant pollution spreading across the border of 31 eastern states and the District of Columbia. We need this rule.

In Atlanta, we know what makes a good neighbor. Neighbors take care of each other. They don’t throw trash in your yard. They don’t hurt you or your family. Trouble is, coal plants have been bad neighbors for far too long. Now it’s time for things to change.

EPA’s “good neighbor rule” would do what we in Georgia cannot do: clean up the pollution blowing into our state from states like Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and even Florida.

Coal-fired power plants would have to install new equipment that would reduce millions of tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions — noxious gases that form ozone and fine particles. Ozone and fine particles are wind-driven, life-threatening pollutants.

Pollution from power plants causes asthma attacks, heart attacks and lung cancer and increases the risk of hospital admissions and emergency room visits. Ozone and particle pollution can even kill.

Deaths can occur on the very day that levels are high, or within one or two months afterward. These deaths would not occur if the air were cleaner.

The EPA proposes to cut air pollution that flows from upwind states beginning in 2012. By 2014, the rule and other state and EPA actions would reduce power plant sulfur dioxide by 71 percent over 2005 levels; nitrogen dioxide emissions, by 52 percent.

Now, you will hear arguments that the Transport Rule timeline is too short, too expensive and that electricity may be less reliable. Fortunately, none of that is true.

Affordable electricity will continue to flow to American consumers and businesses.

Last month, a study funded by power companies found that electricity would be just as dependable under the new rule. EPA says electricity prices would increase less than 2 percent as a result of the pollution reduction requirements.

What would change is more than $120 billion to $290 billion in new annual health and welfare benefits by 2014. It would help save 14,000 to 36,000 lives, prevent 23,000 heart attacks, avoid 240,000 asthma attacks and keep students in school and workers on the job for 1.9 million days they would have missed due to health problems. These benefits far outweigh the estimated annual cost of $2.8 billion to the utilities.

Good neighbors don’t blow nasty, life-threatening exhaust into each others’ homes. We urge EPA to adopt the Clean Air Transport Rule so that we can all learn to be good neighbors.

June Deen is state director for the American Lung Association in Georgia. Rebecca Watts Hull is director for Mothers & Others for Clean Air.