The cost of skirting clean-air regulations

The public-health dangers posed by Old Dominion Electric Cooperative's plans for a power plant in Surry County are well-documented. The utility predicts the plant will spew more than 3,000 tons each of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide every year. That's six times the sulfur pollutants that will be released at Dominion Virginia Power's newest plant in Wise County.

Those gases create ozone, or smog, that worsens asthma, emphysema and other lung diseases. They also will do damage to wallets across Hampton Roads.

Hampton Roads is already likely to fall short of new federal Clean Air Act standards scheduled to take effect in March 2011. The ODEC plant will make compliance harder. That's likely to translate into years of federal regulations, including ones that will force vehicle owners to pay for expensive emissions tests.

If Henry Howell were alive, the Norfolk Democrat would say, "If the big boys are part of the problem, they should be part of the solution."

But Virginia lawmakers are trying to whittle away the power of the State Air Pollution Control Board to make sure the big polluters are doing their share. If power plants aren't required to clean up emissions, the burden will fall more heavily on every other polluter.

Four years ago, the Virginia legislature passed the Clean Smokestacks Act, which includes a provision that affected just one power plant in Northern Virginia. The law said the air board could limit that plant's ability to buy pollution credits from utilities elsewhere to make up for their own emissions. That kind of deal is permitted under federal law.

A court struck down the air board's ban on transferring credits between plants owned by the same company, but the state may still restrict a plant's purchase of credits from other utilities. That would ensure pollution is still being reduced in Virginia, not in Texas or Minnesota, for example.

The Northern Virginia plant was singled out because it was the only one located in a region that failed to meet federal Clean Air standards. But once the new standards are in place next year, other plants could face similar restrictions. ODEC and other utilities hope to head off that restriction by getting the legislature to reduce the board's authority.

Legislators, as usual, are eager to grant utilities' wishes.

A House sub-committee has voted to curb the air board's power. Senators want to preserve protections for air quality in Northern Virginia but are willing to block the air board from adopting similar rules for Hampton Roads or other parts of the state.

That's categorically unfair. Everyone in the commonwealth deserves cleaner air.

They also deserve reasonable rules to make sure everyone shares in efforts to reduce pollution. Car owners in Hampton Roads won't be able to pay a Texan to reduce the tailpipe fumes from his pick-up truck. Instead, they'll have to make expensive repairs to their own vehicles.

Power plants need some flexibility to use pollution credits, but it's also necessary to maintain close oversight to ensure the program fulfills its goal of cleaner air. Utility supporters argue that state environmental staffers can still impose rules on pollution credits, but citizen members of the air board have historically taken the lead on this issue. They shouldn't be shoved out of the way when their leadership is needed most.