Clean Air in the News

Our analysis shows that TVA is one of the largest contributors to air pollution in North Carolina. In the eastern United States, TVA emissions account for almost 900 deaths annually. Coal-fired plants that make electricity are the largest source of air pollution. In just our state, the emissions are responsible for more than 15,000 illnesses and hundreds of emergency room visits and deaths each year.

Hazy mountain views have plagued the tourism industry. Employers and workers face years of mounting health-care costs. The economy in North Carolina's western mountains is at risk.

Here in North Carolina, we did the right thing. We couldn't count on Washington to bring us fresh air, so we had to take action ourselves to cut pollution with proven technology.

It wasn't easy or simple, but in the end utilities, industries, advocates and everyday folks agreed to enact a state law that cleans the air: North Carolina's Clean Smokestacks Act. It reduces all power-plant nitrogen emissions by 2009, and all sulfur emissions by 2013, by more than 70 percent from 1999.

But the act applies only to power plants in North Carolina, and pollution doesn't stop at the state line.

Our new law helps clean the air not only in North Carolina, but also in downwind states. Now we're asking that power plants in other states step up. Part of the new law directs me to "use all available resources" to ensure that others, specifically the TVA, reduce pollution.

We know the TVA has made promises to do better, but it hasn't guaranteed how much or when. It's unwilling to commit in any legally enforceable way to reduce pollution as North Carolina has. It's resisted federal efforts to require pollution-control equipment on its plants and is fighting North Carolina's petition to the EPA for help under the Clean Air Act.

We have no choice but to ask the courts to stop TVA from continuing to pollute our state's air.

The TVA is important, and it keeps the lights on and businesses running in the Tennessee Valley. But all the heat and light it provides are undercut if it's also making people sick, sometimes so sick they die.

The TVA has cut some of its pollution, but it should do so much more. And the TVA should want to, since as a public agency it should hold itself to the highest standards.

North Carolina utilities have promised over the next decade to dramatically reduce emissons of sulfur dioxide, a toxic gas that corrodes trees and buildings, as well as the lungs of people who breathe it.

But the TVA is under no such limit, and its power plants will pump out hundreds of thousands more tons of it into the air unless they are controlled. A lot of that will cross over the border into North Carolina. So even as we cut our own smog, the pollution next door continues. Meanwhile, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is named as the most polluted in the National Parks System, rivaling Los Angeles for ozone pollution.

Last year we wrote to the TVA with our concerns. We've asked other state officials to sit down with us. So far, TVA has only trumpeted past improvements - most of them required by consent decrees signed in the late 1970s - and said it will do more. But nothing it's promised is enforceable.

The best outcome would be for us to sit down with the TVA and find a reasonable, cost-effective plan to cut emissions that we put on paper. That can still happen, and I hope it does.

Cutting pollution from the TVA makes good business sense. Reducing health costs and keeping tourists visiting and industry thriving brings more customers to the utilities, and more residents to the area. And the TVA's customers will still pay less for electricity than utilities customers in other states.

Too much pollution browns trees and chokes the mountain air. It aggravates pneumonia, influenza, lung disease, asthma and respiratory diseases. It causes premature death.

Clean air improves real lives. Children whose asthma keeps them indoors on hazy days could run and climb outdoors. Seniors could stop checking the air quality every morning as they check the thermometer on hot days.

Seniors such as Judy Byrd, who lives in Yancey County bordering Tennessee, could enjoy her mountains without worrying about catching her breath. She's 63, a nonsmoker and retired now after 31 years of teaching. She remembers when the mountain air was clear. But two years ago she was diagnosed with lung disease. Now instead of throwing open the windows, she stays indoors with a humidifier, air cleaner and sometimes straight oxygen.

She shouldn't have to live that way. No one should. The TVA must do better.

• Roy Cooper is the attorney general of North Carolina.