Executive Watch: DEQ Opposes Gutting Air Pollution Rules
The Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to help aging coal plants burn longer, adding to greenhouse gas emissions. Thousands of lives could be lost. North Carolina’s Department of Environment Quality (DEQ) opposes it.
Last week, the EPA released what it deceptively labeled its “Affordable Clean Energy Rule.” The rule is neither clean nor affordable. States would be allowed to set their own limits for carbon dioxide emissions. For states with weaker controls, that would permit older coal-fired power plans to operate longer, spewing out more climate-altering carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, as well as soot and sulfur compounds. Pollution from those states would cross state lines on the prevailing winds, impacting the air quality and health of downwind states (like North Carolina).
The EPA admits that up to 1,400 lives a year could be lost as a result of this rule change—and that is before considering the impacts of climate change.
Reacting immediately, 14 states, including North Carolina, sent formal letters to the EPA attacking the proposal. DEQ Secretary Michael Regan wrote that the new rule “abandons [EPA’s] obligations under the Clean Air Act to ensure that state plans address dangerous air pollution from existing pollution sources” like coal-fired power plants. “This proposal will endanger the health and welfare of our residents.” The letter was accompanied by 14 pages of comments detailing how the rule would harm North Carolina’s residents and economy, including impacts from climate change and environmental injustice and inequity.
What a difference a governor makes: Just two years ago, under Gov. Pat McCrory and his DEQ Secretary Donald van der Vaart, North Carolina had joined in with the states suing the Obama EPA to block its Clean Power Plan. Gov. Cooper and his DEQ Secretary Regan withdrew North Carolina from support of that lawsuit last year. Now our state is fighting for the right side—for clean air and public health.
