What's New
On March 12, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency issued disappointing new public health standards for safe
levels of smog, or ozone. Read the news release.
Coal-fired power plants are the
largest source of the pollution that leads to health-threatening smog and soot
in North Carolina. Utilities and other industries lobbied
furiously for the changes in the weeks leading up to EPA’s decision—which
contradicted the unanimous advice of its own scientific advisory panel.
How You Can Help
Become a member of Environment North Carolina. Visit our
take action page for the latest on our campaigns for clean air, clean water, and open spaces, and how you can help.
Background
Pollution from power plants is threatening our health and
environment. Millions of North
Carolinians live in areas that fail to meet minimum health
standards for smog and soot—pollutants that make people sick, cut lives short,
and cause children to miss school. Pollution
from coal-fired power plants is even clouding our rural mountains—diminishing
views and making it unhealthy to breathe even atop Mt.
Mitchell.
In 2002, backed by Environment North Carolina and a host of
others environmental and public health groups, North
Carolina adopted the Clean Smokestacks law to slash
pollution from power plants. This new
law has made a difference. Yet power
plant pollution throughout the Eastern United States
continues to pollute the Tar Heel State.
What’s more, much of this pollution is against the law.
That’s why Environment North Carolina is working to make
sure power plants in North Carolina
and around the country clean up their pollution and follow the letter of the
law.
Represented by our allies at Southern Environmental Law
Center, we’ve already prevailed in a case against Duke Energy, who upgraded
their plants from 1988 to 2000 without installing the pollution controls
required by the nation’s Clean Air Act.
In 2006, we also joined with our allies to sue the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency for failing to clean up illegal pollution
throughout the Eastern United States—pollution that continues to threaten
public health in North Carolina. That
case is still pending.
