Statement of Elizabeth
Ouzts, NCPIRG Director
As the new home of NCPIRG's environmental work,
Environment North Carolina can be contacted with any questions regarding this
news release.
We applaud Attorney General
Roy Cooper and Governor Mike Easley for taking action to reduce roughly half
of the nation's health-threatening power plant emissions—the pollution
that sends thousands to hospital emergency rooms and even triggers premature
death.
Each year, 1,800 North Carolinians
die prematurely from power plant pollution; thousands more are sent to hospital
emergency rooms due to asthma attacks and other respiratory ailments. U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Analysis shows that North Carolina's action would eliminate
4.8 million tons of soot-forming sulfur dioxide pollution and 1.5 million tons
of smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants in the Southeast
and the Midwest.
North Carolina is using
the Clean Air Act to petition the federal government clean up dirty power plants
in 13 other states: Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland,
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan.
North Carolina is the first
state in the South—one of the regions hardest hit by air pollution due
largely to coal-burning power plants—to petition the federal government
to clean up other plants.
Two years ago, North Carolina passed the Clean Smokestacks Act, which is predicted
to save hundreds of lives and reduce high ozone days in North Carolina. But
North Carolina will still be unable to meet federal clean air standards due
in part to pollution crossing its borders from other Midwestern and Eastern
states.
If the federal government
responds according to the letter of the nation's clean air law, leadership from
Attorney General Cooper and Governor Easley will mean that North Carolinians
and millions of other Americans will breathe easier.
North Carolina's action
is a wake-up call to the federal government to clean up health-threatening pollution
from the nation's power plants.
