Proposed haze rules won’t come cheaply, but are they ruinous?
From the August 16 Arizona Daily Sun
Navajo Generating Station emits nitrous oxide plume.
Is it a substantive change or just cosmetic?
And even if the former, will it be ruinously expensive?
Those are the questions swirling around the EPA’s decision to require more comprehensive — and costly — pollution controls on three coal-fired plants that are blamed for generating haze over national parks in the region.
Congress approved laws in the 1990s requiring restoration of “natural visibility” over about a dozen national parks and wilderness areas — including Grand Canyon — by 2064. More immediately, states are required to show they are making reasonable progress toward that goal.
But unlike laws on the health effects of coal plants, Congress specifically said the anti-haze plans have to be based on a cost-benefit analysis, weighing the price tag against the improvement.
What brings the issue up now is that the federal Clean Air Act specifically requires power plants built between 1967 and 1977 to adopt the “best available retrofit technology” to improve visibility within 300 kilometers, about 186 miles. Each state was given the chore of doing that analysis. Click here for the entire Arizona Daily Sun editorial.
