Volume 142, No. 125 covering the 2nd Session of the 104th Congress (1995 - 1996) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“FINDINGS CLOUD POLLUTION THEORIES” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1607-E1608 on Sept. 12, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
FINDINGS CLOUD POLLUTION THEORIES
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HON. MICHAEL G. OXLEY
of ohio
in the house of representatives
Thursday, September 12, 1996
Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I would commend to my colleagues the following article of September 2, 1996, authored by Mr. Jim Nichols of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The article summarizes new scientific findings that discredit the theory that the Midwest is responsible for the air pollution findings of the Northeast. This further confirms the findings of the Government-funded NAPA report, which was completed a number of years ago. This research should be considered in setting Federal policies in a number of areas.
Findings Cloud Pollution Theories--Midwest Smog May Not Drift to the
Northeast
(By Jim Nichols)
As the summer cools down, the politics and economics of air pollution are heating up.
The early results from highly advanced computer modeling are casting a haze of doubt over a persistent claim from Atlantic Seaboard states that Ohio and the Midwest are the culprits in the Northeast's smog problems.
The modeling results, released at a multistate air-quality planning meeting in July, show that certain key air pollutants don't drift as far across state borders as previously believed, experts familiar with the models say.
The computer simulations, though incomplete, indicate key windborne pollutants that are components of smog are likely to blow no more than 200 miles, not many hundreds or even thousands of miles, as researchers previously believed.
The results weaken theories that are especially popular among Northeastern states--that coal- and oil-fired power plants in the Midwest and Southeast are to blame for smog in Boston, New York and Maine.
Though much more modeling remains to be done, many air-quality experts say the early implications are huge.
The results, some believe, could weaken the Atlantic Seaboard region's argument that Ohio and other upwind states should spend billions of dollars on new smog controls to help clean the Northeast's air. Regulators and scientists studying seaboard-state smog, for instance, are contemplating advanced pollution controls on Midwestern and Southern power plants that are as strict as those in place in the high-smog region.
Utility and coal interests have estimated the cost of such controls to Midwestern and Southeastern electrical customers at $18 billion to $27 billion annually. Centerior Energy Corp. pegs the cost between $200 million and $500 million annually here.
fearful of costs
The findings seem to reinforce the theory that local and regional air pollution programs in the Northeast are the only significant way to solve the region's perennial failure to meet federal clean-air standards.
Officials in the problem states have long feared that the higher cost of living and doing business resulting from stricter emission controls on power plants and factories has put the region at a competitive disadvantage.
Some Northeastern states have scrapped their versions of E-check auto-emissions testing amid public outcry, saying such political hot potatoes are meaningless if the air drifting in from afar is so foul.
``Clearly, this is not what the 13 states in the
[Northeast] want to hear,'' said Ray Evans, environmental-affairs manager for Centerior Energy Corp. ``The East Coast utilities have flat out said that we in the Midwest are the problem and our ratepayers are going to have to pay.''
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Donald Schregardus said, ``It's kind of what we thought. * * * It says to those states, `You fix your cars, and then we [in the Midwest] will talk about spending $5 billion to fix our power plants.''
Schregardus and his air-quality division chief, Robert Hodanbosi, said the computer simulations show that even on days when Northeastern smog was at its worst, the drift from faraway states downwind made no more than a few percentage points' difference. Evans and other officials familiar with the modeling results confirmed that.
``I was surprised at the limited impacts,'' Hodanbosi said.
The early findings do not necessarily mean Ohioans and other Midwesterners will forever and completely avoid the costly new smog controls, said Schregardus and experts conducting the modeling.
The results, after all, show those proposed reduction strategies will help achieve cleaner air in the Midwest. If models show that the advanced pollution controls would be needed for certain Midwestern areas to meet federal clean-air targets, certain parts of the Midwest could still implement controls as stringent as those already imposed on power plants and factories in the Northeast.
Further, the federal EPA is expected to tighten air-pollution limits nationwide significantly later this year. The limits have not been determined yet, but Ohio EPA officials predict that no major metro area in the state--and few in the nation--will comply without significant emission reductions from cars and smokestacks.
But for now, at least, ``It's conceivable that with the information on the table, the Midwest could make an argument that they don't have that much impact on the Northeast,'' said Danny Herrin, an executive with the Atlanta-based Southern Corp, an electric utility following the modeling closely.
the ozone mix
The subject of the computer modeling is ozone, a gas that occurs both naturally and as a result of man-made pollution.
Where it forms by natural processes in the upper atmosphere, ozone reflects harmful ultraviolet radiation away from Earth. But when it builds up near the ground, it is a powerful respiratory irritant that apparently can trigger asthma attacks and debilitating breathing problems, especially among people with lung disease, the elderly, children and people who work outdoors. In high concentrations, ozone also has been linked to permanent lung damage and can harm trees and crops.
Ozone forms when fumes called hydrocarbons react in hot summer sunlight with other airborne pollutants called nitrogen oxides. Hydrocarbons come from auto emissions and other combustion processes, and from evaporating gasoline, solvents and paints. The principal source of nitrogen oxides are fossil-fuel power plants.
Atmospheric and environmental scientists began concluding in the late 1980s that nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons are capable of drifting on air currents until they encounter the right conditions to interreact and form ozone.
When Congress revised the Clean Air Act's ozone limits in 1990, it identified dozens of metropolitan areas in states from Maine to Virginia as chronic violators of the act's ozone limit of 125 parts of ozone per billion parts of air. The law recognized that the states' balance levels of ozone were so high that only a regional approach to cuts would allow individual cities to comply with the law.
States in the Atlantic Seaboard region agreed in writing three years ago to adopt their own strict new limits on nitrous oxide output from power plants, in addition to measures ordered by Congress and the federal EPA.
But they also enlisted the EPA to run computer simulations to determine whether the so-called ozone-transport phenomenon would rule out regional controls.
The early EPA modeling in 1993 proved controversial, showing the Northwest's baseline levels were high not just because of the heavily populated region's contributions but because of dirty air blowing in from the Midwest and South.
While critics in downwind states--especially utilities and coal interests--attacked the model as inaccurate, the Northeastern states began pressuring the EPA for a ``super-regional'' approach that would require similar control measures for upwind states. States in the South and Midwest resisted initially but agreed to study the issue.
A national organization of state environmental officials formed the Ozone Transport Assessment Group, comprising 37 states--all those east of the Mississippi and those along its western banks. The group now includes more than 500 environmental regulators, technical experts and representatives of environmental groups, industry and utilities--all studying ozone transport and its effects.
The assessment group was formed for two reasons. One was to develop a far more sophisticated computer simulation of ozone transport. The other was to develop pollution-control policies for all 37 states to impose, voluntarily, to reduce ozone in the Northeast.
As a first step, states conducted far-reaching
``inventories'' of all major and minor sources of ozone-forming pollutants, including estimates of emissions from cars, factories, evaporating paint, gasoline stations and other sources. An assessment group committee of atmospheric and environmental scientists and computer experts developed a computer program that applies that emissions data to know wind and weather patterns. It simulates drift and compares predicted ozone levels at hundreds of locations to those actually measured. Another committee compared particularly bad spells in the summers of 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1994.
When the assessment group began running the computer program this spring, results from the simulations proved remarkably similar to the real conditions, said Michael Koerber, who chairs the group's modeling committee.
``We're convinced that the model works and is giving us the right results for the right reasons,'' said Koerber, director of a consortium of air-quality officials from states around Lake Michigan.
Then the modeling experts began running what Koerber calls
`'what-ifs.'' They asked the computer what changes would result if lower emissions from certain control measures were applied across the 37-state ``super-region''--if power plants were forced to change their operations, for instance, or cleaner-burning cars were mandated.
Many more simulations remain to be run--at a cost of more than $1 million each--to measure the effects of changing emissions variables in smaller and smaller parts of the super-region. However, the theory of long-range ozone drift has already begun to break down.
The simulations showed that drift existed. But while Chicago may suffer from St. Louis' emissions, or Cleveland from Columbus', there was little evidence that those cities were having major impacts on the Northeast.
``It's really something we're just starting to get some information on, and we really need to investigate further,'' Koerber said. But, he added: ``The 1,000-mile distance seems to be a bit of a stretch from a transport standpoint.''
competitiveness is issue
Some participants in the assessment group are worried that the new data may strain the group's cooperative spirit and lead to a return of finger-pointing. If utilities in the Northeast face higher costs than those in the Midwest, for instance, they would be at a competitive, disadvantage in the coming environment of deregulation. The federal government is moving toward a system in which industrial customers will be able to choose their power company without regard to its geographic location.
``Clearly, this is a competitive issue between East Coast utilities and Midwest utilities,'' said Centerior's Evans.
Hodanbosi and other participants said pressure is mounting from some Northeastern participants not to run more detailed models that could further solidify the case that the Midwest's effects there are minimal.
``Anytime you have those kinds of conflicts, you can expect it to be contentious,'' said Illinois EPA Director Mary Gade, who chairs the committee that will ultimately recommend pollution-control policies that will apply across the membership of the assessment group. ``I think we're going to be in for some heated policy decisions in the next several months.
``The nice thing is that the process to this point has been a very open and collaborative process. We'll see if we can hold onto that.''
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