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When Congress revised and strengthened the Clean Air Act (CAA) in 1990, it was not well understood that nitrogen oxides (NOx) are major contributors to ground-level ozone, or smog. NOx hardly dented the radar screen during the clean air debates.
But with the benefit of hindsight, and a National Academy of Sciences study, we suddenly have become much wiser. The bottom line is that utilities in the Northeast and New England will be saddled with big pollution bills that virtually no one anticipated when the nation's clean air law was overhauled.
As the science has evolved, the goal in the Northeast has shifted to controlling NOx emissions from both mobile and stationary sources. Power plants, especially large coal-fired boilers, will be targeted in the years ahead for significant NOx reductions beyond what is currently prescribed for NOx control in the CAA's Title 4 acid rain provisions. Otherwise, states ma fail to meet their ozone-attainment targets and face some crippling federal sanctions, many state officials say.
November 15 marks the deadline for states to submit implementation plans to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to show how they plan to achieve the CAA's Title 1 ozone nonattainment goals.
To that end, the Ozone Transport Commission (OTC) adopted in late September a NOx reduction strategy for stationary sources in the Northeast that are supposed to be incorporated into state implementation...