North Carolinians may now check daily air quality forecasts for ozone across the state.

This year’s ozone season began Sunday, signaling a reset for state and local environmental agencies to post daily air quality forecasts for ozone.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality will include ozone in its daily air quality forecasts, which includes year-round fine particulate matter pollution, through Oct. 31.

Ozone forms in the air from the Earth’s surface when nitrogen oxides react with hydrocarbons in the presence of heat and sunlight. Potential human health effects from exposure to high levels of ozone including heart and lung conditions, such as asthma, particularly in young children and older adults.

“Ozone levels on North Carolina’s highest ozone days continue to decline due to steady reductions in emissions from its primary air pollution sources: power plants, industry and motor vehicles,” according to the state.

North Carolina was designated as attaining the 2015 ozone standard statewide by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2017, and has maintained compliance with the standard since.

The division’s meteorologists use the air quality index to monitor and forecast ozone and fine particular matter. Daily forecasts are issued every three days out by 3 p.m. with a morning update by 10 a.m. the next day.

The state agency provides up-to-date, localized forecasting for 91 of North Carolina’s 100 counties and two mountain ridgetop zones.

The Forsyth County Office of Environmental Assistance and Protection forecasts air quality for the greater Triad region, including Winston-Salem and Greensboro.

In addition to the state’s air quality portal, forecasts are also available through the EPA’s AirNow website and app.

The division’s X feed and Facebook include forecast updates, information about active air quality alerts and opportunities to learn more about air quality.

Real-time and historical air quality and meteorological observations are available through the Ambient Information Reporter tool. Current- and long-term ozone trends for monitors through the United States are provided by the Ozone Design Value Predictor tool.

An educational video explaining the different air quality index color codes is available in English and Spanish.

It has been almost two weeks since the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to ax Obama-era carbon emission regulations for new motor vehicles and engines, arguing that the agency didn’t have the authority to impose the science-based standards on the greenhouse gas emissions that the current administration says have only a negligible effect on climate change.

While Republican lawmakers and leaders in the fossil fuel and automotive industries support the move, Democratic Party leaders, health care industry and environmental groups are saying the decision goes against decades of peer-reviewed research that the heat-trapping gases will amplify climate change, and are taking legal action.

President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Feb. 12 that the administration was rescinding its own findings, and, consequently, eliminating the greenhouse gas emission standards, or the legal limits on the amount of pollutants a vehicle can emit, that have been in place for more than 15 years.

“We are officially terminating the so-called Endangerment Finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump said during a press conference Feb. 12 at the White House. “Effective immediately, we’re repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emission standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond.”

The agency stated in a release that week that the Obama-era EPA, via section 202 of the Clean Air Act, exceeded its “authority to combat ‘air pollution’ that harms public health and welfare.” The EPA said that a policy decision of this magnitude should be up to Congress, and “even if the U.S. were to eliminate all GHG emissions from all vehicles, there would be no material impact on global climate indicators through 2100. Therefore, maintaining GHG emission standards is not necessary for EPA to fulfill its core mission of protecting human health and the environment, but regardless, is not within the authority Congress entrusted to EPA.”

When the action was announced, there was a torrent of criticism.

“Today, the Trump administration repealed the endangerment finding: the ruling that served as the basis for limits on tailpipe emissions and power plant rules. Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money,” former President Barack Obama said on social media Feb. 12.

Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said that the EPA’s action to repeal the endangerment finding that greenhouse gases threaten the health of all communities undermines decades of science and rulings by federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Instead of protecting the public’s health from the dangerous and deadly effects of air pollution, including greenhouse gases emitted by new cars and trucks, this action will exacerbate the health threats we are already seeing from climate change, including increased heat waves, more air pollution and deadly wildfires,” Benjamin said in a statement.

Dr. Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement that Zeldin “took a chainsaw to the Endangerment Finding, undoing this long-standing, science-based finding on bogus grounds at the expense of our health. Ramming through this unlawful, destructive action at the behest of polluters is an obvious example of what happens when a corrupt administration and fossil fuel interests are allowed to run amok.”

Goldman continued that the science establishing harm to human health and the environment from heat-trapping emissions was clear in 2009.

“More than fifteen years later, the evidence has only mounted as have human suffering and economic damages. Meanwhile, the continued burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming emissions to rise. The science, the facts and the law are unassailable: EPA has the obligation and the authority to regulate this pollution under the Clean Air Act, an act of Congress it’s now blatantly violating,” she said. “The transportation sector is the single largest source of U.S. global heat-trapping emissions. By scrapping vehicle global warming pollution standards today, the Trump administration has co-signed the release of more than 7 billion tons of planet-warming emissions nationally in the decades ahead.”

The “Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Under the Clean Air Act” was published Feb. 18 in the Federal Register.

The same day more than a dozen groups filed a lawsuit in the D.C. circuit against the EPA, “over its illegal determination that it is not responsible for protecting us from climate pollution and its elimination of rules to cut the tailpipe pollution fueling the climate crisis and harming people’s health,” the Environmental Defense Fund announced last week.

“The finding supported commonsense safeguards to cut that pollution, including from cars and trucks. In addition, the agency eliminated the clean vehicle standards, which were set to deliver the single biggest cut to U.S. carbon pollution in history, save lives, and save Americans hard-earned money on gas,” continued the Environmental Defense Fund.

Clean Air Act

The Clean Air Act has given the EPA comprehensive authority to set standards for and regulate motor vehicle pollution since it was signed by President Richard Nixon Dec. 31, 1970.

Section 202(a), states that the administrator “shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”

The act was amended in 1977 and 1990, expanding EPA authority.

In 2004, the agency initiated efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then in 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act.

By December 2009, the EPA had established the backbone for greenhouse gas emission rules with the final “Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act,” or the “endangerment finding.”

The EPA administrator had two conclusions: the “endangerment finding,” and the “cause or contribute finding.”

The endangerment finding that determined the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride — “in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”

The cause or contribute finding is that “the combined emissions of the six “well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution that threatens public health and welfare under CAA section 202(a).”

Rescission background

Rescinding the endangerment finding has been in the works for a year. Zeldin said in March 2025, that the agency was going to formally reconsider the 2009 endangerment finding and resulting regulations.

A fact sheet from the EPA explains that the agency was directed to review the legality and applicability of the endangerment finding.

“EPA carefully considered and reevaluated the legal foundation of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the text of the CAA, and the Endangerment Finding’s legality in light of subsequent legal developments and court decisions,” the agency states. “The agency concludes that Section 202(a) of the CAA does not provide EPA statutory authority to prescribe motor vehicle emission standards for the purpose of addressing global climate change concerns. In the absence of such authority, the Endangerment Finding is not valid, and EPA cannot retain the regulations that resulted from it.”

Zeldin reiterated the argument during the Feb. 12 press conference, saying that Congress never voted for the climate mandates in section 202 of the Clean Air Act.

“If Congress wants EPA to regulate the heck out of greenhouse gasses emitted from motor vehicles, then Congress can clearly make that the law, which they haven’t done, for good reason,” Zeldin said at the press conference. “We have now realigned EPA rulemaking to reflect the Clean Air Act exactly as it is written and as Congress intended, not as others might wish it to be, where our predecessors focused on trying to make and please a few fear mongering climate alarmists.”

‘Exhaustive Precedent’

Around the time a public comment period opened on the findings, Dena Adler, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity out of the New York University School of Law, and legal fellow Kate Welty, issued a 19-page brief, “Exhaustive Precedent: EPA’s Requirement to Regulate Motor Vehicle Emissions that Contribute to Dangerous Air Pollution” in July 2025.

They explain that the current administration’s reasons for repealing the emission standards, stating that the “EPA’s suggestion that motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions may not legally ‘contribute’ to climate change because they comprise a small share of global emissions rests on a flawed understanding of Section 202.”

They write that the Clean Air Act controls pollution from both stationary sources such as power plants and factories and mobile sources such as cars and trucks. Section 202 requires EPA to regulate emissions from new motor vehicles “if the Administrator finds that they ‘cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.’”

The provision “authorizes EPA to regulate a variety of air emissions from new ‘motor vehicles,’ which encompasses cars, light-duty trucks (pick-up trucks and SUVs), heavy-duty trucks, buses, and motorcycles. Under this authority, EPA has been regulating air pollution from motor vehicles since the 1970s,” they continue.

With the 1977 revisions to the Clean Air Act, “Congress wanted EPA to consider how each source of emissions contributed to public health dangers, not limit the agency to regulating only source categories that emitted enough pollution to independently cause health harms,” Adler and Welty explain. “Any effort by EPA to now require that greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles independently endanger public health and welfare would contradict the express Congressional intention described in the legislative history.”

Adler and Welty note that, in 2009, when the EPA concluded that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare and that the greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles contribute to climate change, “the agency found that new motor vehicles were responsible for over 23 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and approximately 4 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and concluded that either comparison was sufficient to meet the contribution standard of Section 202(a).”

In the time since, nothing has meaningfully changed to disturb this finding, as motor vehicles remain responsible for more than 23% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles “still make a meaningful contribution to climate change and unquestionably cause substantial damages in and of themselves. They also far surpass the levels of contribution that EPA has consistently recognized as sufficient to justify regulation in the past,” they wrote.

“The scale of greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, EPA’s regulatory precedents under Section 202, and its reasoning under analogous Clean Air Act provisions all demonstrate that emissions from motor vehicles contribute to dangerous air pollution.”

Coastal effects

Southern Environmental Law Center Climate Analyst Jenny Brennan told Coastal Review last week that the lift of the endangerment finding “will almost certainly result in the worsening of climate change impacts that North Carolina communities are already struggling with — meaning sea level rise at faster rates, more rainstorms that drop massive amounts of water in just a few hours, and heatwaves that make it difficult for people to stay safe and healthy.”

Brennan continued that all these impacts will add stress to the already taxed infrastructure, such as roads, drainage systems and housing.

“Extreme heatwaves with even more air pollution, which is likely in the absence of the air regulation policies based on the endangerment finding, pose an even greater health hazard; heat plus air pollution makes it harder for even healthy people to breathe and is especially dangerous to people with asthma, heart conditions, or other medical conditions,” Brennan said.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has suffered the highest percentage of staff cuts of any state, with nearly one-third of its workforce eliminated between 2010 and 2024, according to an environmental watchdog group.

A whopping 32%, or 386 DEQ staff positions, were wiped out during that 14-year period, according to an Environmental Integrity Project report released earlier this month.

Those staff cuts, the report concludes, leave the state agency responsible for administering regulations to protect water, air quality and the public’s health “ill-positioned to confront” pollution from the state’s growing factory farming industry, climate-driven storms and flooding in coastal communities.

The report notes how the agency was downsized when former Gov. Pat McCrory signed the 2015-16 state budget into law, triggering a shift of several divisions from what was then the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The Republican governor, who also renamed the agency the Department of Environmental Quality, said the move aligned with his vision for government efficiency.

Josh Kastrinsky, DEQ’s deputy communications director, said in an email last week that it is “difficult” to directly compare present staffing levels to those in 2010 because of the changes that were made to the department in 2015.

“However, for several regulatory divisions that existed in 2010 and 2025, staffing levels declined by at least 25%,” he wrote, adding that, “The EIP report focuses on regulatory work and does not include DEQ’s non-regulatory work, which affects the total numbers of staff shown.”

As of the week that began Dec. 8, the departments vacancy rate was 8%, Kastrinsky said.

“This includes an engineer vacancy rate of 14% and an environmental specialist vacancy rate of 9%,” he said. “Several DEQ programs have larger workloads and several programs have less staff than they did in 2010.”

North Carolina’s population has increased by more than 11.5% since 2010, according to USAFacts, a nonprofit organization that gathers data from federal, state and local governments.

The state’s population growth corresponds to an increase in environmental permit applications filed with the department.

Since 2010, the department’s Division of Mitigation Services has seen a 200% increase in projects.

During that same time period, the number of erosion and sediment control project applicants filed with the Division of Energy, Mineral, and Land Resources has jumped by nearly 60%, and the Division of Waste Management has received a 62% increase in underground storage tank applications.

“The 2010-2025 period also includes several destructive hurricanes, and DEQ staff have been heavily involved in recovery and long-term resilience in impacted communities,” Kastrinsky said. “DEQ’s ability to hire and retain sufficient staff levels has a direct effect on its ability to provide permit oversight, technical assistance to businesses and customer service to North Carolinians.”

The department’s “roughly 1,700 staff members remain dedicated to providing science-based efforts to ensure clean air, water and lands by managing applications, conducting inspections and permit oversight, investigating complaints and taking enforcement measures as appropriate under law,” he continued. “DEQ also continues to focus on a variety of funding and assistance programs to maintain critical infrastructure and make communities’ aging systems more resilient to increasingly severe natural disasters.”

The Environmental Integrity Program analyzed the budgets, annual expenditures and staffing levels from 2010 through to 2024 of the environmental agencies of all 50 states.

North Carolina topped the list of 31 states found to have cut jobs at their environmental agencies from 2010 to 2024. Connecticut experienced a 26% cut during that same time, followed closely by Arizona, which saw a 25% reduction in its environmental agency’s staff.

Seven states, including Texas, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Connecticut, reduced their pollution control funding by at least a third, the report concludes.

The impacts of such cuts will likely only be exacerbated by the Trump Administration’s plans to downsize the Environmental Protection Agency, the program warns.

“The Trump Administration is attempting to dismantle EPA and rollback commonsense federal pollution rules, claiming that the states can pick up the slack and protect our communities – but that’s not the case,” Jen Duggan, Environmental Integrity Project executive director, stated in a release. “The implementation of our environmental laws depend on both a strong EPA and state agencies that have the resources they need to do their jobs. But our research found that many states have already cut their pollution control agencies and so more cuts at the federal level will only put more Americans at risk.”

The report highlights North Carolina’s factory farming industry, which includes the production of nearly 1 billion chickens annually for sale as meat. And, as of March, there were 8.1 million hogs in concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, in the state.

Poultry waste at these CAFOs is sometimes dumped in open-air heaps and, when it rains, washes into nearby streams, discharging harmful nutrients into waters downstream, including those in the Cape Fear River Basin, which has the highest density of CAFOs in the world, according to Cape Fear River Watch.

“The unchecked expansion of hog and poultry farms has left the state environmental agency unable to even evaluate the cumulative impacts,” Drew Ball, director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s Southeast Campaigns team, states in the report. “At this point, policy experts and advocates can’t even get the information they need to protect the public. You can’t respond if you don’t know what’s coming online. We need to think a lot harder about keeping track of potential pollution and what it could mean for downstream communities.”

Coastal Review will not publish Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in observance of the Christmas holiday.

Chemours’ air permit application to expand production at its Fayetteville Works plant excludes emissions data that should be disclosed to the public, environmental lawyers say.

The company “improperly withheld vital emission data from the public” in its Aug. 14 application to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality, according to a letter Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys sent the department last month.

“We urge the Department to require Chemours to re-submit its application with disclosed emissions data,” the Sept. 19 letter states. “North Carolina law clearly states that emission data cannot be kept secret.”

Jess Loizeaux, Chemours’ communications leader, refuted that claim, writing in an email responding to a request for comment, “our permit application fully disclosed the projected emissions associated with the expansion.”

“Certain details included in the application submitted to DAQ – such as production capacity, operating hours, and emissions factors – were redacted from the public version because they are considered confidential business information and, if made public, could harm our competitive position,” Loizeaux said. “Protecting confidential business information is standard practice and does not affect transparency regarding environmental impacts.”

Attorneys for Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont made a similar argument earlier this year when they filed a court motion to keep under seal thousands of pages of documents they say include “non-public facts” that largely pertain to chemical production.

Lawyers representing public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant submitted 25,000 pages of documents to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina as part of lawsuit those entities brought against the companies in October 2017.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority, and Wrightsville Beach aim to recover costs and damages associated with the Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River. The river is a drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the region.

The court had not rendered a decision on Chemours’ request as of this story’s publication.

In 2020, Chemours submitted an application to renew its Title V permit, which applies to major source of air emissions, for its Fayetteville Works plant to the state Division of Air Quality.

Two years later, the company applied for a separate permit to expand its production of vinyl ethers and IXM.

Chemours revised and resubmitted that permit application to expand only its production of vinyl ethers last August. Vinyl ethers are a class of compounds used to create a variety of products used in a range of technologies from semiconductor chips to aviation components.

Vinyl ethers are used to create a wide variety of products, including polymers for adhesives, coatings, and plastics

The expansion would pertain to the plant’s two existing vinyl ethers production units, Loizeaux said.

“As outlined in the revised permit application, additional abatement technology will be installed alongside each expansion and is projected to decrease the site’s overall fluorinated emissions by approximately 15%, despite an increase in production,” she said. “A timeline for the expansions has not yet been set.”

Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys argue in their Sept. 19 letter to DEQ that Chemours is violating provisions within the state law that outlines protection and disclosure rules for confidential information.

The application, “blacks out emission rates from stack testing, uncontrolled emission factors, hours of operation, maximum hours of operation, historic production, and post-modification production capacity. The information is necessary to verify and fully understand the emissions and authorized emissions at the facility and cannot be withheld from the public,” according to the letter.

The letter goes on to state that Chemours previously disclosed similar information in previous submissions to DEQ.

“Chemours’ about-face from its past submissions further confirms that this information cannot be treated as confidential,” the letter states.

Last April, the SELC, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, asked DEQ to deny Chemours’ request to expand production at its Bladen County plant, arguing that the company’s air permit application was riddled with flaws.

As part of 2019 consent order with DEQ and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours installed a thermal oxidizer to capture and destroy PFAS from emitting into the air. The order also requires the company to test tens of thousands of private drinking water wells for PFAS contamination throughout the region.

In a 20-page letter to DEQ, SELC attorneys argue Chemours questioned the efficacy of thermal destruction technology on PFAS.

“Investigating Chemours’ thermal oxidizer specifically, [the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] determined that, due to a lack of data, ‘removal processes for products of incomplete combustion or of destruction of potential compounds not studied … are still unclear.’ In other words, it is possible that the company’s thermal oxidizer does not fully destroy many PFAS. Some may break down into other harmful chemicals, and others may not be destroyed at all,” the letter states.

DEQ Interim Deputy Communications Director Shawn Taylor said in an email earlier this month that while air quality officials deem the latest version of Chemours’ application administratively complete, “the Division may require additional information from the applicant to conduct its technical review.”

“The Division plans to schedule a full public engagement process, including a public comment period and public hearings, to be announced at a later date,” he said.

The state commission that adopts rules to protect natural resources is expected to hear this week updates on existing measures to improve air and water quality, but the bulk of the July 9-10 meeting will concentrate on the mandated periodic review process for several existing rules.

The Environmental Management Commission Committee meetings are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday and the full commission is to meet at 9 a.m. Thursday, both in the Archdale Building in Raleigh.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality acts as staff and enforces rules for the commission. Meeting agendas and supporting documents, as well as steps to join the meeting virtually or by phone can be found on the commission’s website. 

When the full commission meets Thursday, members are to decide on moving through the multiple steps required to satisfy a general statute that requires existing state rules be reviewed every 10 years.

The rules under review include how the Environmental Management Commission is organized, water resources programs, and streams and wetlands mitigation. The full commission is also to hear an update on the Tar-Pamlico Wastewater Discharge Requirements Rule and progress on a nutrient criteria development plan.

Information on recent Environmental Protection Agency actions is to be delivered during committee meetings.

During the air quality committee meeting at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Division of Air Quality Director Mike Abraczinskas is to give an overview of recent EPA actions relating to federal air quality regulations.

The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, committee is expected to review and discuss at its 12:30 p.m. Wednesday meeting the existing agreement between the state and the EPA on the permitting program.

On the state level, during the 10:45 a.m. groundwater and waste management committee meeting, DEQ staff will review the “2024-2034 NC Solid Waste and Materials Management Plan,” which assesses the status of solid waste and materials management in the state.

Those interested in attending the 10th annual NC BREATHE Conference “dedicated to strengthening community health and environmental resilience across North Carolina” in Charlotte this fall can take advantage of early bird registration.

Cost to attend the in-person event scheduled for Oct. 8-9 at the Harris Conference Center in Charlotte is $350 until July 31, when the rate will increase to $450. Student rate is $100 and for impacted community members. Registration, which can be completed on the organization’s website, includes breakfast, lunch, and light snacks for both days of the conference.

Organized by CleanAIRE NC, AIRE stands for Action and Innovation to Restore the Environment, the Charlotte-based advocacy group “is working to protect North Carolina’s air quality and ensure that people have clean air to live healthier, happier lives.”

Keynote speakers include Dr. Sacoby Wilson, Dr. Shaneeta M. Johnson and Charles Lee.

Wilson is a professor with the Department of Global, Environmental, and Occupational Health and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Health where directs The Health, Environmental, and Economic Justice, called THE EJ Lab. 

Johnson is an associate professor of surgery, director of the Minimally Invasive and Bariatric Surgery Program, and Residency Associate Program director at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.

Lee has been a name in environmental justice for five decades. He spent two of those decades with the Environmental Protection Agency, most recently serving as deputy associate assistant administrator for Environmental Justice. According to a LinkedIn post, Lee’s last day with the federal agency was March 31.

The theme for this year’s two-day event “explores the intersection of planetary and human health and community resilience. Planetary health highlights how human activities significantly impact our environment, which in turn affects our health and well-being,” organizers said. “Building community resilience — the capacity to adapt and recover from environmental disruptions like natural disasters or climate change — is crucial for withstanding threats to planetary health and tackling global challenges like climate change.”

ClearAIRE NC has hosted the annual NC BREATHE Conference since 2015 in various cities around the state.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s State Energy Office wants to hear your ideas on how the state can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Beginning later this month, the department will kick off a series of public engagement meetings where participants will be provided information and may give feedback on DEQ’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction initiatives.

Those initiatives are going to be part of the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant’s Comprehensive Climate Action Plan.

The state received a $3 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency for the planning phase of the plan, which will target reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollutants.

North Carolina’s planning project is a collective effort being led by DEQ that also includes the Department of Transportation, Department of Commerce and Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Last year, the state submitted its Priority Climate Action Plan in which it identified North Carolina’s highest priority greenhouse gas reduction measures. Discussion at the upcoming meetings will be based on the measures identified in that plan.

The plan is to be used in updating and expanding existing climate strategies in the state, “ensuring that these policies align with the latest available science, modeling and best practices,” according to a DEQ release.

That plan is due to the EPA later this year.

Public engagement meetings will run through March and will be provided both in-person and virtually.

Register for the sessions using this form.

The first meeting will be held virtually on Feb. 25 at 6 p.m. To join online go to: https://ncgov.webex.com/ncgov/j.php?MTID=ma5fde5df2dec2c062946bf9fc374d93a

The meeting number is 2432 204 2273 and the password is CPRG2025.

To join by telephone dial +1-415-655-0003 or U.S. toll +1-904-900-2303 and enter access code 2432 204 2273

The first in-person meeting will be hosted Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. at the Lumbee River Electric Membership Corporation, 6090 NC Hwy 711, Pembroke.

The following meetings will be held next month:

• 5 p.m. March 6 at the Cumberland County North Regional Public Library, 855 Mcarthur Road, Fayetteville.
• 6 p.m. March 13 at Western Piedmont Community College, 1001 Burkemont Ave., Morganton.

Meetings in northeastern and southeastern North Carolina are also planned, but dates were not announced.

A formal public comment period on the draft plan will open in August.

Members of the public may also provide feedback via email to cprg@deq.nc.gov with “CPRG Comment” in the subject line, or via voicemail by calling (919) 707-8672.

For additional information about the grant program and to view previous public information sessions visit the CPRG webpage.

North Carolina Environmental Management Commission members are to continue their discussion on regulating toxins in the air and water during the commission’s meeting this month.

Commission committees are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday, July 10. Agenda items include the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s proposed groundwater and surface water standards for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and a semi-annual progress report on 1,4 dioxane in the Cape Fear River Basin.

At the full commission meeting set for 9 a.m. Thursday, July 11, members are to consider moving forward in the rulemaking process to revise ambient air quality standards and the periodic review of administering the dry cleaning solvent cleanup fund.

Meetings will take place in the Archdale Building in Raleigh and be streamed online. Webinar information, including the link, and meeting agendas and materials are on the website.

This commission oversees and adopts rules for several divisions of the Department of Environmental Quality, including the Divisions of Air Quality, Land Resources, Waste Management and Water Resources.

Two Wilmington firms are among the recipients of grants for projects to reduce air pollution from diesel-powered vehicles and other mobile equipment.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality announced Monday that its Division of Air Quality had awarded a total of $1.11 million in grants, including $40,000 to Waste Management of Carolinas Inc. and $97,933 to Southeast Crescent Shipping Co., both of New Hanover County.

The division awards Mobile Source Emissions Reduction Grants yearly for projects to replace, retrofit or repair diesel vehicles and reduce emissions. It said the awards this year would replace 18 older diesel vehicles with what it called “cleaner alternatives,” with the majority, more than $866,000, going toward new electric vehicles.

In total, the awards this year will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 3,000 tons over their lifetimes. They will also eliminate more than 43 tons of nitrogen oxide and 4 tons of particulate matter, officials said.

Waste Management is to use the grant money to replace two diesel freight refuse haulers with two low-nitrogen oxide compressed natural gas refuse haulers. The agency said this project reduces 0.49 tons of lifetime nitrogen oxide emissions associated with diesel combustion engines.

Southeast Crescent Shipping Co.’s grant is for replacing four diesel port forklifts with new, cleaner technology, a move that will cut lifetime nitrogen oxide emissions by 5.33 tons.

Applications for the 2023 Mobile Source Emissions Reduction grants closed in February. Electrification projects, projects in historically under-resourced counties or environmental justice communities, and projects submitted by minority-owned or women-owned businesses received bonus points during the scoring of applications, officials said.

The grants are funded by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, or DERA, program, which supports projects designed to achieve significant diesel emissions reductions. This year, EPA prioritized funding for goods-movement facilities, environmental justice and disadvantaged communities, project resilience to climate impacts and workforce development.

DEQ said diesel engines, particularly older equipment, emit pollution that can contribute to health conditions including asthma and heart and lung disease. The agency also cited damage to crops and other vegetation, formation of acid rain, impaired visibility, and further climate change and global warming as risks of diesel emissions.

For more information about the Mobile Sources Emissions Reduction grant program, visit the division’s website.

Enviva, a wood pellet producer with a huge economic and environmental footprint in North Carolina, is teetering on the edge of financial collapse.

In a continuation of months of bad financial news for the multinational corporation, Fitch Ratings, a global credit-rating agency, last week downgraded Enviva Inc.’s default rating and unsecured debt rating, reflecting a missed interest payment on Jan. 16 of $24.4 million.

“This development follows worsening operating losses and Enviva’s announcement last fall of substantial doubt regarding its ability to continue as a going concern,” Fitch said in its Jan. 19 report. “Considerable uncertainty exists regarding Enviva’s ability to renegotiate uneconomic customer contracts entered into 4Q22 and the company’s related $300 million liability.”

Enviva is now in a 30-day grace period, the report said. If the interest is not “cured” next month, it said, the company is at risk of default and also is vulnerable to further rating downgrades. 

“Obviously, they are in dire straits,” Scot Quaranda, communications director with Dogwood Alliance, an Asheville-based environmental group and major critic of Enviva, said in a recent interview. “They bet on their own future in the futures market and they failed.”

But it’s not yet known what the impact of the Maryland-based company’s fiscal woes could be to the state and the rural communities where thousands of workers are employed.

Bryant Buck, executive director of the Mid-East Commission, which provides support to local governments in Hertford, Bertie, Martin, Beaufort and Pitt counties, said he had not heard that Enviva was having financial difficulty, but he said the potential of job cuts or operation downsizing is a concern.

“Any business loss in Hertford County certainly sparks my interest,” he said. “We want to do everything we can from our role in helping them. We really want to keep our economy going in all of our regions.”

An Enviva spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the company’s situation.

“At this time, we have no further comment beyond the information that is already publicly available on our IR website,” Maria Moreno, Enviva’s vice president of communications and public affairs, said in an emailed response to Coastal Review.

According to Enviva’s website, manufacturing plants in North Carolina, which are operated around the clock, seven days a week, are located in Ahoskie, Hertford County, where the permitted annual production capacity is 410,000 metric tons; in Garysburg, Northampton County, with 750,000 metric tons of permitted capacity per year; and in Faison, Sampson County, with 600,000 metrics tons permitted per year. Each of those sites store and ship the wood pellets from the Port of Chesapeake, Virginia.

An additional site in Hamlet, Richmond County, is permitted to produce 600,000 metric tons per year, but those pellets are stored and shipped from the Port of Wilmington.

Other Enviva plants in the Southeast are in Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina and Virginia.

Elly Cosgrove, communications manager at North Carolina Ports, redirected questions about the business’s shipping to the company.

“Enviva has been a long-standing tenant at the Port of Wilmington and remains current on all their payments,” she said in an email response to Coastal Review. “We can only speak to the lease as we are the lease holder.”

As a result of the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive issued in 2009, biomass — such as wood pellets — was classified as a renewable energy. That decision spurred rapid growth of the pellet industry in the U.S., largely in the Southeast.

Enviva describes itself as “the world’s largest producer of sustainable wood pellets, a renewable alternative to coal,” and a “global energy company specializing in sustainable wood bioenergy.” It also characterizes burning wood pellets as “a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.”

But the global environmental community contends the industry is, if anything, a prime example of greenwashing, with its practice of clearcutting forests and creating air pollution.

“I can’t think of anything that harms nature more than cutting down trees and burning them,” William Moomaw, professor emeritus of international environmental policy at Tufts University, said in a July 2021 CNN article.

A November 2022 class action lawsuit against Enviva filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland by stockholders accuses the company of misrepresenting the environmental impact of its business as well as its financial integrity.

“Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Enviva had misrepresented the environmental sustainability of its wood pellet production and procurement; (ii) Enviva had similarly overstated the true measure of cash flow generated by the Company’s platform; (iii) accordingly, Enviva had misrepresented its business model and the Company’s ability to achieve the level of growth that Defendants had represented to investors; and (iv) as a result, the Company’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.”

Despite the legal challenge, the company had around the same time announced plans to expand its footprint in the Southeast.

In 2022, Enviva applied to the state to expand production at its Ahoskie site by a third, to 630,000 tons a year.

Environmental justice advocates fought the proposal, saying that the facility was already polluting the air of the small community, which has a large population of Black residents.

In Feb. 2023, the state Department of Environmental Quality issued a modified permit to the facility that made expansion dependent on installation of new air pollution control devices to “substantially reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and hazardous air pollutants, or HAPs. This equipment includes a regenerative thermal oxidizer and a regenerative catalytic/thermal oxidizer.

Ahoskie, which was Enviva’s flagship site, has been operating since 2011. Over the years, the state has provided incentive funds, including grants, to several of the sites.

The most recent report Enviva filed in 2022 with the North Carolina Department of Commerce, a requirement of businesses that receive incentive funds, did not reveal any compliance issues, said communications director David Rhoades.

Still, the department is concerned, he said, with “any employer” and its workers in the state.

“We’re aware of the press reports and we monitor performance on a regular basis,” Rhoades said about Enviva.

Kevin Patterson, interim Hertford County manager, said that the county had not received a required notification of any layoffs at the Ahoskie plant, making it difficult to anticipate potential impacts to the community.

“Until we have an idea of what may or may not happen, it’s hard to know what a projection would be,” he said.

But for the time-being, Enviva’s standing, is on shaky ground.

According to a recent USA Today Network article, the company’s stock price has plummeted from about $87 a share in April 2022 to about 80 cents a share in January 2024. Quaranda, with Dogwood Alliance, said it’s possible that Enviva could completely shut down, or the company could find a way to renegotiate its contracts, among other adjustments.

“Without any kind of regulatory pressure to do things right, it’s hard to believe that they’ll not do whatever it takes to remain solvent,” he said.

But the industry has always been “a house of cards,” Quaranda said.

“It’s a false premise to cut down a bunch of trees, burn it, and call it renewable energy,” he said.

A wood pellet production facility in Ahoskie has to install new air pollution control devices to reduce pollutant emissions under a newly issued modified air quality permit.

Under the newly modified permit, Enviva Pellets’ flagship plant in Hertford County must install a regenerative thermal oxidizer and a regenerative catalytic/thermal oxidizer to cut volatile organic compounds, or VOC, and hazardous air pollutants, or HAP, emissions.

A thermal oxidizer creates heat that converts emissions into carbon dioxide and water.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality said Thursday that the permit modifications will reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides and particular matter, including fine particulate matter.

The Title V permit allows the plant to increase its pellet production from 481,000 oven dried tons to 630,000 oven dried tons per year and the production of softwood pellets to a maximum of 100%, according to a DEQ news release.

Enviva Pellets Ahoskie began manufacturing pellets in November 2011 and it has been considered a major source under the Prevention of Significant Deterioration program, one established by Congress to prevent significant environmental impacts on regions where air quality meets the protective health standards under the Clean Air Act.

After the controls are installed and tested, the company will be a minor source under the program. The permit restricts the facility’s VOC emissions to less than 250 tons per year and hazardous air pollutant emissions to less than 10 tons per year.

The facility will be required to conduct stack testing if monthly softwood content or the production rate increases by more than 10%.

The permit updates follow a public hearing and comment period held last year on a draft permit for the facility.

Under the modified permit, the plant must submit a new fugitive dust plan to the Division of Air Quality within 90 days of installing new control devices to show how it will maintain and operate equipment while preventing dust from drifting beyond the property’s boundaries.

Residents concerned about dust at Enviva Pellets Ahoskie should contact the division’s Washington Regional Office at 252-946-6481.

Enviva Pellets Ahoskie operates 24/7 and has a production capacity of about 410,00 metric tons, according to the company’s website.

The final permit and other documents related to the permit are available online.

RALEIGH — The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission, when it meets Nov. 10, is expected to hear a presentation related to Gov. Roy Cooper’s recent executive order calling for development of a program to phase in zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty trucks.

The meeting is to be held in the ground floor hearing room of the Archdale Building at 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh. Face coverings are optional for staff and attendees. Seating is limited. The public can attend using remote access.

Cooper’s Executive Order 271, signed in late October, directs the state Department of Environmental Quality to work with stakeholders to propose to the commission an Advanced Clean Trucks program that would ensure zero-emission trucks and buses are available for purchase in the state.

Related: Executive order to expand zero-emission vehicle market

The commission is also expected to hear about a proposed rule readoption on transferring surface waters between basins, and allowing the Department of Air Quality to receive copies of applications, submittals, records and correspondence electronically where physical hard copies are currently required.

Also, the commission’s water allocation committee meets at 9 a.m. Nov. 9, followed by the air quality committee at 10:15 a.m. and then the water quality committee at 1:30 p.m. And the commission’s two civil penalty remissions groups meet at 1 p.m. Nov. 10.

Agendas and meeting materials are on the Department of Environmental Quality’s website.

The Environmental Management Commission is responsible for adopting rules for the protection, preservation and enhancement of the state’s air, land and water resources. The commission oversees and adopts rules for several divisions of the Department of Environmental Quality, including the divisions of Air Quality; Energy, Mineral and Land Resources; Waste Management and Water Resources

Guest commentary

This is the third and final piece in a commentary series by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund.

When North Carolina’s recent greenhouse gas inventory was updated earlier this year, it surprised few to see the electric power and transportation sectors account for the vast majority of the state’s climate emissions. And while there have been improvements in fuel-economy and greater adoption of clean energy over the years, a recent report by EDF found that the state is not on track to meet its climate pollution goals without new policies to meet its targets. Gov. Roy Cooper set important goals for the state to slash climate-warming pollution in half by 2030, so it makes sense that the state should first tackle its biggest offenders. Thankfully, there are readily available solutions for the transportation and power sectors that North Carolina can take advantage of to meet its climate goals, bolster the economy, and reduce harmful air pollution.  

When it comes to tackling transportation emissions, new analysis from RTI International, a North Carolina-based nonprofit research institute, shows that adopting clean transportation policies for medium- and heavy-duty (MHD) vehicles can make a big difference toward reaching the state’s climate goals while also offering significant health benefits, and providing billions of dollars of net-benefits to our state’s economy by 2050. Because MHD trucks and buses produce disproportionately more pollution than passenger cars, electrifying this class of vehicles will have an outsized impact on cutting pollution. RTI’s researchers concluded that the implementation of two policies — Advanced Clean Trucks (ACTs) and Heavy-Duty Omnibus (HDO) — could provide total net benefits between $25 billion and $53 billion for North Carolina’s economy by 2050. Improved air quality resulting from these policies provide even greater benefits, amounting to nearly $110 billion in cumulative public health savings for North Carolinians over the same time period. 

Under the Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) rule, North Carolina would increase the percentage of new zero-emissions trucks purchased in North Carolina each year, beginning with the 2026 model year through 2035. Under the Heavy-Duty Omnibus (HDO) rule, the state would establish declining exhaust emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles, requiring an additional 75% reduction in emissions starting with model year 2026, and then a 90% reduction beginning in model year 2027. Implementing both of these policies would cut North Carolina’s transportation pollution by nearly half by 2050, which is the equivalent of avoiding the use of roughly 16 billion gallons of diesel fuel or taking 35 million passenger vehicles off the road for a year. 

Cleaning up the power-sector is the linchpin to a clean economy because it unlocks deeper reductions in other sectors that rely on electricity, such as buildings and electric vehicles. Successfully achieving power-sector climate goals is essential to achieving the state’s economy-wide goals. The new North Carolina energy law enacted last fall, HB951, calls on the North Carolina Utilities Commission to develop a Carbon Plan to reduce power-sector pollution. The Commission will need to implement a strong Carbon Plan that puts the power-sector on a firm path to consistently drive down climate pollution, expand the use of clean energy, and meet the 2030 target without delay. 

A program like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) could also play a key role in driving progress toward North Carolina’s power-sector climate goals, and is currently under consideration by the state’s environmental regulators. RGGI has enabled 11 other eastern states to lower climate pollution from power plants, successfully cutting emissions in half over the past decade. A report published last year by researchers at Duke and UNC found that joining RGGI was the most cost-effective pathway to reducing power-sector pollution, and that when implemented alongside other climate and clean energy policies, RGGI had the effect of improving the overall affordability of those policies. Based on that analysis, it’s reasonable to conclude that the RGGI program would be a meaningful complement to the H951 Carbon Plan, improving both its effectiveness in delivering carbon pollution reductions and doing so at lower cost to ratepayers.

Governor Cooper has laid the groundwork for North Carolina to be a national leader on climate with the pollution reduction goals established by Executive Order 80, and Executive Order 246. With just eight years remaining to meet the critical 2030 milestone, future North Carolinians will recognize this time as a defining moment in the fight against climate change. And though not currently on track to meet its climate commitments, policy tools are available to deliver on these critical pollution reduction goals and secure a cleaner, healthier and more prosperous future for North Carolina. With solutions like those laid out in RTI’s analysis to tackle the most polluting vehicles on the road, and with pivotal power-sector policies under development, North Carolina can make meaningful progress toward improving the quality of life and the health of our communities in the near term and for future generations of North Carolinians. 

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or the North Carolina Coastal Federation. Submissions may be edited for clarity.

Government entities and certain organizations may now submit applications for grants to replace their older transit and shuttle buses through the second phase of funding from the Volkswagen air emissions legal settlement.

The request for proposals released Tuesday explains how to apply for the $13.5 million available to replace older, diesel transit or shuttle buses with cleaner, low-emission vehicles to significantly reduce nitrogen oxide emissions and improve air quality, the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality announced this week.

In Phase 2, the Division of Air Quality will prioritize electric vehicle replacement projects to maximize emission reductions and public health benefits. Projects within the 37 counties identified as historically under-resourced are eligible for bonus project scoring points as well as additional technical support during the application process. 

Local, state and tribal government organizations, public or private nonprofit organizations and public-private partnerships may submit proposed projects where the lead applicant is a public sector, public or private nonprofit organization.

The division said it will also hold additional information workshops during the application period. Information regarding applications, eligibility and registration for the division’s online information sessions is to be posted on the division’s website, at https://deq.nc.gov/VW-Transit-Bus-RFP.  

The VW settlement is an agreement between the German automaker and the U.S. Department of Justice on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency. These settlements resolve allegations that Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act by the sale of approximately 590,000 model year 2009 to 2016 diesel motor vehicles equipped with “defeat devices,” the EPA states on its website.

The division said it will accept applications for the program until May 2.   

Phase 2 of the VW Mitigation Plan covers the remaining $68 million of the state’s share of a national settlement with the automaker and includes programs for school bus replacement and zero emission vehicle infrastructure. 

Contact the division at daq.NC_VWGrants@ncdenr.gov with the subject title: “Transit and Shuttle Bus_Program RFP” before submitting an application and in advance of the submission deadline.

The schedule for future requests for proposals is available online. 

The state Environmental Management Commission voted Tuesday to move forward with the process to develop rules to limit carbon dioxide pollution from the state’s electric power sector.

In a 9-3 vote during its special meeting in Raleigh, the commission cleared the way for the Department of Environmental Quality to begin the rule-making process, which will include opportunities for public engagement.

In January, the Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Clean Air Carolina and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, submitted to the Division of Air Quality the petition for rule-making and a proposed rule. The commission’s Air Quality Committee reviewed the petition during a special meeting June 15 and recommended that the petition be presented to the full commission for action.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, human activities are responsible for almost all of the increase in greenhouse gases, which trap heat and cause the planet to warm, in the atmosphere in the last 150 years. The largest source in the U.S. is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat and transportation. Carbon dioxide makes up most of the greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector, which also emits small amounts of methane and nitrous oxide. These gases are released during the combustion of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas to produce electricity.

The petition proposed that the state join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, which would require North Carolina to commit to setting up a carbon reduction program and adopt a law or regulation similar to the RGGI Model Rule designed for the state’s circumstances and preferences, according to documents. RGGI is an effort to cap and reduce power sector carbon dioxide emissions by Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia.

Commission Chairman Stan Meiburg, who voted in favor, noted that while the cost for the state Department of Environmental Quality to implement the rule-making process will have to be addressed moving forward, “the objective remains, for me at least, to achieve reductions as fast as practically possible, and moving to approve this petition to go to rule-making I think moves that ball forward.”

After the vote, Meiburg said that he didn’t want to leave anyone with the impression that the rule-making for this would be simple. He expected the process to be involved and include the stakeholders involved up to this point.

Commissioner Marion Deerhake, who voted in favor of the motion, said during the meeting that improving children’s health had been a goal since her first day on the commission. “And to me, this goes a huge step forward as we develop this rule, because ultimately we are looking to the future generation, benefiting them and giving them a healthy and enjoyable life.”

Gudrun Thompson, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a statement that the commission’s decision was “a common-sense step to reduce harmful carbon pollution from power plants in what a study by UNC and Duke University shows is a cost-effective approach.

“Given the threat of climate change to our state, North Carolina needs to do its part to cut heat-trapping carbon pollution from power plants. Today’s action by the EMC will help move our state towards a clean energy future by pushing polluting coal generation off the power grid,” Thompson said.

According to the petition, the threat to the state due to global climate change “is real, it is present, and it is getting worse.”

The petition says that the Earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity, leading to rising sea levels and other effects. “Extreme precipitation has become more common and will be even more common in the future. The intensity of hurricanes and the frequency of other severe storms will increase. Flooding will increase, but so too will droughts and wildfires. Each of these changes will hit our most vulnerable residents hardest.”

Todd Miller, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, noted that it’s very early in hurricane season, and two tropical storms already have affected the North Carolina coast.

“While we keep a watchful eye on the tropics, it’s encouraging that state leaders want to find ways to reduce carbon pollution so that our oceans won’t get so warm and spawn as many intense storms,” he said.

The Cooper administration set a goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by 70% by 2030, reaching net zero emissions by 2050. The proposed rule filed with the commission would help achieve those targets in a cost-effective way by setting a declining limit on heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and setting North Carolina up to join RGGI, according to the law center.

RGGI-participating states saw emissions from power plants fall 47% from 2008 to 2018, 90% more than in the rest of the country. RGGI states over that decade also saw reduced air pollution and fewer premature deaths, heart attacks and respiratory illnesses; a 5.7% decline in electricity prices, compared to an increase in the rest of the country; and economic growth that outpaced the rest of the country by 31%, according to SELC.

“This rulemaking is an opportunity for our state to lead the Southeast in carbon reduction which will result in cleaner air and better health,” said June Blotnick, executive director of Clean Air Carolina, in a statement. “For the past few years, North Carolina has lost ground as a clean energy leader. RGGI is an opportunity to put the right market mechanisms in place to properly value clean energy generation without arbitrary mandates.”

 A discussion on 1,4 dioxane has been added to the agenda of the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission’s special meeting next week on a petition for rule-making to limit carbon dioxide, or CO2, pollution from the state’s electric power sector.

The meeting is at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the Ground Floor Hearing Room of the Archdale Building at 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh.

The July 13 meeting was announced last month after an Air Quality Committee voted June 15 during a special meeting to advance the petition to the full commission, as previously reported. The addition of 1,4 dioxane to the agenda was announced Friday in a reminder from the Department of Environmental Quality about the special meeting.

The petition for rule-making was filed in January with the state Division of Air Quality on behalf of the Clean Air Carolina and the North Carolina Coastal Federation by the Southern Environmental Law Center. The petition requests that the Environmental Management Commission establish a rule to limit carbon dioxide pollution from the electric power sector in North Carolina.

The commission also will consider if they should undertake an additional review of discharges of 1,4 dioxane, both generally and related to the recent exceedance of the targets contained in the special order by consent approved for the city of Greensboro’s T.Z. Osborne Wastewater Treatment Plant in March.

A colorless liquid or solid at temperatures below 53°F, 1,4 dioxane can harm the eyes, skin, lungs, liver, and kidneys and may cause cancer, according to the CDC.

Face coverings are not required if fully vaccinated to attend the meeting in person. To hear the audio and view presentations online, use the link WebEx link https://bit.ly/3hN2a5x and password NCDEQ. To listen to the meeting by phone, dial 1-415-655-0003 and use access code 161 204 1508

Additional information, including the agenda and supporting information, may be found on the EMC’s website.

The Environmental Management Commission is responsible for adopting rules for the protection, preservation and enhancement of the state’s air, land and water resources. The commission oversees and adopts rules for several divisions of the Department of Environmental Quality, including the divisions of Air Quality; Energy, Mineral and Land Resources; Waste Management and Water Resources.

State environmental officials are asking for public comment on a draft plan to invest $67 million from the settlement of a federal case against Volkswagen for misrepresenting its diesel emission standards in certain vehicles.

The amount represents the state’s share of the $2.9 billion settlement of a case in which the carmaker was alleged to have violated the Clean Air Act by selling about 590,000 vehicles equipped with devices that would defeat emission-reduction equipment during regular driving.

The draft phase 2 mitigation plan focuses on efforts to reduce pollution impacts while incentivizing zero emission vehicles and increasing outreach to under-resourced communities.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality will accept until 5 p.m. Sept. 7 comments online through Microsoft Forms at https://bit.ly/3jMMu3i, emailed to daq_NCVWGrants@ncdenr.gov or by voicemail at 919-707-8429.

The Division of Air Quality will hold a series of information sessions to explain the draft plan. Those interested in receiving funds for eligible projects are encouraged to register and attend one of the following meetings:

• 10 a.m.-noon July 14 in Asheville
• 2-4 p.m. July 14 in Charlotte
• 2-4 p.m. July 21 at North Carolina State University Clean Energy Technology Center in Raleigh
• 2-4 p.m. July 21 at Lenoir Community College in Kinston

The Division of Air Quality will also hold a series of in-person public information sessions for counties eligible in the Historically Under-Resourced Counties Outreach Program. Additional meeting dates, locations and times will be added to the DEQ Volkswagen Program webpage.

Gov. Roy Cooper designated the Division of Air Quality as the lead agency to manage the mitigation project in November 2017. Wilmington Trust officially designed North Carolina as a state beneficiary in January 2018.

In phase 1 of the program, North Carolina awarded nearly $27 million to replace 111 school buses and 16 transit buses and to install 33 zero emission vehicle, or ZEV, fast charging stations and 78 Level 2 charging stations across the state.

Additional information regarding Phase 2 can be found online.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has scheduled a special meeting next month to consider a petition that rules be adopted that limit carbon dioxide, or CO2, pollution from the electric power sector in the state.

The meeting is set for 9 a.m. July 13 on the petition that the Division of Air Quality received in January on behalf of Clean Air Carolina and the North Carolina Coastal Federation from the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The petition requests that the commission adopt rules to limit CO2 pollution from the electric power sector and proposes participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, as the primary route to reduce CO2 emissions. Details will be posted on the EMC website.

A special meeting was held June 15 when the Air Quality Committee, after reviewing the petition, voted to advance the petition to the full commission, as previously reported.

Before the special meeting, the commission will have its regular meeting July 7-8 in the ground floor hearing room of the Archdale Building, 512 N. Salisbury St. Raleigh. Committee meetings are July 7. The Groundwater & Waste Management Committee meets at 9:30 a.m., the Air Quality Committee at 10:45 a.m. The full Commission Meeting begins at 9 a.m. July 8.

When the Water Quality Committee meets at 1 p.m., members are expected to hear a request for approval to proceed with proposed permanent rules to “Discharges to Federally Non-Jurisdictional Wetlands and Federally Non-Jurisdictional Classified Surface Waters” and Permanent Rule Amendments for “Discharges to Isolated Wetlands and Isolated Waters: Purpose and Scope.”

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Army published in April 2020 the Navigable Waters Protection Rule in the Federal Register to finalize a revised definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act that went into effect June 22, 2020. The new rule fails to protect a subset of wetlands, as there was no permitting mechanism available to authorize impacts, according to commission documents.

The commission in May 2021 approved temporary rules to authorize impacts to wetlands no longer federally protected, which expire unless a permanent rule is adopted. The Division of Water Resources staff is asking for approval from the water quality committee to go before the full commission in September to request approval to proceed to public notice and public hearing on draft permanent rules.

The public is invited to attend the meeting in person or online. Face coverings are not required if you are fully vaccinated. Meeting audio and presentations will be broadcast via the state web conferencing link posted on the EMC website.

The Environmental Management Commission is responsible for adopting rules for the protection, preservation and enhancement of the state’s air, land and water resources. The commission oversees and adopts rules for several divisions of the Department of Environmental Quality, including the divisions of Air Quality; Energy, Mineral and Land Resources; Waste Management and Water Resources.

The state Environmental Management Commission’s air quality committee has set a special meeting to consider a rule to limit carbon dioxide pollution from the electric power sector in North Carolina.

The meeting at 9 a.m. June 15 will be in the Archdale Building in the ground floor hearing room, 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh. The limited seating for the public will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. The public also can attend online at https://bit.ly/3hN2a5x using password NCDEQ or by calling 415-655-0003, using access code 161 204 1508.

The committee is expected to review the petition and recommend action by the full Environmental Management Commission.

The petition for rulemaking, filed on behalf of Clean Air Carolina and the North Carolina Coastal Federation by the Southern Environmental Law Center, proposes that the state participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative as the primary mechanism to reduce carbon dioxide, or CO2, emissions from the electric sector. 

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is a joint effort for Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia, and the first mandatory, market-based carbon dioxide emissions reduction program in the country, according to RGGI.

The petition for rulemaking for the June 15 meeting “proposes regulations that establish the necessary framework for North Carolina to join the regional effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve a 70% reduction in emissions from the energy sector by 2030.”

The petition echoes a report released earlier this year, Power Sector Carbon Reduction: An Evaluation of Policies for North Carolina, which examined carbon-reduction policies for the state’s power sector. The report recommends that the state participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative along with taking other measures to reduce carbon pollution such as moving to renewable energy, as previously reported. The report was prompted by the North Carolina Clean Energy Plan under Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order No. 80 signed October 2018.

Without action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the effects of climate change on the state will be severe, according to the petition.. “Unabated, climate change will exact substantial costs on our environment, our economy, and the lives of all North Carolinians. Scientists urge aggressive action now to reduce carbon dioxide (‘CO2’) emissions in order to have a chance at avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.”

Those wishing to make a presentation on the petition for rulemaking should submit an official request to Michael Abraczinskas, Division of Air Quality director, by 5 p.m. June 7 to michael.abraczinskas@ncdenr.gov or by mail to 1641 Mail Service Center, 217 W. Jones Street, Suite 4000, Raleigh, NC 27609-1641.

Additional information, including the agenda and supporting information, may be found on EMC’s website.

Capital Power near Southport is no more.

The small plant, operated by CPI USA North Carolina LLC, ceased operations March 31, according to Katherine Perron, Capital Power’s media relations and communications manager.

“We are now underway with decommissioning the Southport plant, a major focus of which is a thorough cleaning of the site and buildings,” Perron said in an email. “This will be followed by equipment removal, building demolition and salvage, and site reclamation work that is expected to continue through 2021, and possibly into 2022. We are planning to update residents, City and County staff as the process continues.”

CPI, a holding company of Capital Power of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, had operated the plant since 2006.

Leading up to its closure, the facility had been scrutinized by nearby residents, officials in Southport and Caswell Beach, and environmentalists for failing to meet state and federal air quality standards and discharging wastewater routed into the Atlantic Ocean.

The company last fall notified the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality, or DEQ, of its plans to cease operations, per the terms of a draft special order by consent, or SOC, to continue operating.

The state Environmental Management Commission granted the company an SOC in 2016 after the state determined plant emissions of sulfur dioxide exceeded the National Ambient Air Quality Standard. That consent order expired at the end of 2020.

A consent order is generally given to a facility if it is unable to consistently comply with the terms, conditions or limitations in a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit because of problems related to, for example, design of infrastructure.

The 88-megawatt-capacity plant near Southport failed on more than occasion to meet state and federal air quality standards.

The company received a notice of violation in January 2017 for failing to get a prevention of significant deterioration, or PSD, permit before beginning construction to retrofit the plant’s six boilers with sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides controls.

DAQ issued that violation after the facility in February 2016 turned over its first annual emissions report, which showed that actual emissions of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter were “significantly” higher than the company’s projected emissions, according to state records.

The company was fined more than $470,000 for failing to obtain the PSD permit and failing to operate the appropriate controls to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. CPI filed a petition in January 2020 in the state Office of Administrative Hearings challenging the civil penalty, but ultimately paid the fine the following month.

In 2019, CPI applied for two NPDES permits – one for wastewater discharge and the other for stormwater discharge.

Residents from Southport and nearby beach towns urged state officials considering the permit applications for more oversight at the plant and raised concerns about where the discharge was being routed: about 2,000 feet off Caswell Beach’s ocean shoreline.

Wastewater and stormwater discharge from the plant were transported into the same canal used by Brunswick Steam Electric Power Station, which is operated by Duke Energy. Together, the plants generated 2 billion gallons per day of effluent, which traveled into the canal into a pipe buried under the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway before discharging into the Atlantic Ocean.

Ann Carey has been one of several nearby property owners who raised concerns about the plant’s air emissions and discharge practices.

“We are very happy the CPI plant is now closed and are looking forward to their promised removal and clean-up of the site,” she said in an email. “We’ve already noticed how much quieter it is in our neighborhood.”

Carey said she is grateful for the company’s attempts to “lesson and/or fix certain issues,” including CPI’s financial contribution for the construction of a roadway to divert truck traffic and covering the costs associated with pressure washing several homes coated with fly ash due to an incident at the plant.

“Unfortunately, the technology of CPI’s operation was so far outdated and too environmentally unsafe to continue,” she said.

The plant sold electric power to Duke Energy and steam power to Archer Daniels Midland, a food processing company with operations in Southport.

Capital Power held a lease with Duke Energy for use of about 53 acres of the 1,200-acre site, according to Karen Williams, a spokesperson for Duke Energy’s Brunswick Nuclear Plant.

“As far as future uses for the property, we are looking at a variety of options but have made no decisions at this point,” Williams said in an email.

Southport resident Bill North said he believes the land could be sold and developed into a residential neighborhood.

“That doesn’t concern me because it won’t be an overly large development,” he said in a telephone interview. “Overall, talking with my neighbors, everybody is feeling positive. The entire neighborhood is glad that this problem is going away. We’re relieved that we won’t have the airborne and sound pollution coming from the plant.”

Of the newly awarded electric car charging project rebates in the state, four are on the coast.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality awarded $496,000 in rebates for 29 projects in the second group of Level 2 charging projects through the North Carolina Volkswagen Mitigation Settlement Program, the state announced Friday.

Level 2 charging is one of three types of charging units for zero-emission vehicles, or ZEVs. An hour charge on a Level 1 charger gets the car about 2 to 5 miles while an hour at level 2 gets about 10 to 20 miles. For DC Fast Charging 20 minutes of charge is a 60 to 80 miles of range.

The four new coastal charging project rebates were awarded to Unitarian Coastal Fellowship on Bridges Street in Morehead City, town of Southern Shores, Four County EMC Burgaw Office and Cape Fear Community College’s Hanover Street Parking Deck in Wilmington.

NCDEQ has awarded $918,000 in Level 2 rebates for 59 projects from the $1.1 million available for the program to date.

NCDEQ allocated 25% of the Phase 1 ZEV infrastructure allocation, or around $1.1 million, to Level 2 charging infrastructure projects. The Level 2 ZEV Charging Infrastructure Program uses a first-come, first-served rebate process to help interested parties install ZEV Level 2 charging infrastructure, as described in the North Carolina VW Mitigation Plans. The primary goal is to increase use of ZEVs in place of gas-powered cars to mitigate nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and greenhouse gas emissions in the state, according to the state.

Rebate applications will be prioritized by the urban-suburban/rural split described in the NC VW Mitigation Plan, with about 68% of the funds allocated for urban and suburban counties, and a minimum of 32% allocated for rural counties. Rebates will be awarded until the funds are exhausted, according to NCDEQ.

Volkswagen admitted in 2015 that it violated the Clean Air Act by installing illegal software on some of its diesel vehicles. The vehicles with the illegal software emit up to 40 times the allowable levels of nitrogen oxides. Settlement agreements of $14.7 billion nationally were agreed upon to resolve matters related to the violations.

North Carolina has been allocated $92 million in Volkswagen settlement money and is seeking public input on how to use the funds. The Department of Environmental Quality is charged with managing the state’s share of the national settlement. More than $27 million in potential funding is available in the first round of funding, according to NCDEQ.

The 2021 ozone season started Monday. From now through Oct. 31, daily air quality forecasts for ozone will be posted with year-round forecasts for fine particle pollution on Division of Air Quality’s website, Twitter feed, Facebook page or the AirNow site.

Next-day and extended forecasts are issued by 3 p.m. with a morning update by 10 a.m. The forecast is automatically saved every 15 minutes.

Ozone forms in the air when nitrogen oxides, or NOx, react with hydrocarbons on warm, sunny days with little wind. While it was once North Carolina’s most widespread air quality concern and contributor to breathing problems, ozone continues to decline due to steady reductions in emissions from its primary air pollution sources: power plants, industry and motor vehicles. North Carolina has been in statewide attainment with the federal ozone standards since 2017. EPA designated North Carolina as attaining the 2015 ozone standard statewide, according to the state.

The Air Quality Division also developed the Ozone Design Value Predictor Tool, a web-based mapping tool that displays maximum eight-hour ozone and Design Value information using current year ozone data for all ozone monitors in the U.S. The tool provides an up-to-date snapshot of ozone monitor attainment status based on current year ozone data.

The new process will continue to monitor and forecast ozone and particulate matter, or PM2.5, via the air quality index (AQI), along with the corresponding AQI color codes to help residents plan their outdoor activities.

County-based forecasting launched in 2020, replacing the previous system of regional forecasting. The current forecast process gives users up-to-date and localized forecasting for 91 North Carolina counties and two Ridge Top zonest. The Forsyth County Office of Environmental Assistance and Protection forecasts air quality for the greater Triad region, including for Winston-Salem and Greensboro.

The city of Wilmington is one of six recipients to be awarded a grant out of the $1.3 million total for projects to reduce air pollution from diesel-powered mobile sources by the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality.

Mobile sources are any type of vehicle that can pollute the air, including automobiles, trucks, buses, locomotives, motorcycles, off-road vehicles, construction equipment and lawnmowers.

NCDEQ announced the projects totaling $1,335,020 that will replace 21 vehicles, which will reduce an estimated 8.2 tons of nitrous oxide, or NOx, and 285 tons of greenhouse gases per year. NOx, a family of poisonous, highly reactive gases that form when fuel is burned at high temperatures, is emitted by automobiles, trucks and some nonroad vehicles such as construction equipment and boats as well as industrial sources such as power plants, industrial boilers, cement kilns and turbines, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Wilmington has been awarded $270,585 to replace a diesel refuse hauler with an all-electric refuse hauler and install charging infrastructure for the vehicle. This project completely removes the emissions associated with an internal combustion engine, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 36 tons annually.

In addition to Wilmington, NCDEQ awarded grants to the following five recipients:

• The city of Charlotte was awarded $390,207 to replace a diesel transit bus with an all-electric bus. This project completely removes the emissions associated with an internal combustion engine, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 141 tons annually.
• The town of Cary has been awarded $252,375 to replace a diesel refuse hauler with an all-electric refuse hauler and installation of charging infrastructure for the vehicle. This project completely removes the emissions associated with an internal combustion engine, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 21 tons annually.
• BMC East has been awarded $251,352 to replace seven short-haul diesel trucks and six diesel forklifts with new, cleaner technology in Cabarrus, Union and Wake counties. These vehicles will reduce NOx emissions by approximately 4.5 tons and greenhouse gas emissions by 43 tons annually.
• Waste Management of Carolinas Inc. was awarded $160,000 to replace four diesel refuse trucks with four compressed natural gas refuse trucks in Forsyth County. These four new trucks will reduce NOx emissions by approximately 0.8 tons and greenhouse gas emissions by 39 tons annually.
• Sundown Seafood was awarded $10,500 to replace a commercial fishing boat engine with a new, cleaner technology engine. This new technology will reduce NOx emissions by 2.5 tons annually.

NCDEQ is awarding the grants through the Division of Air Quality’s Mobile Source Emissions Reduction Grant program, funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, or DERA, program, which supports projects designed to achieve significant diesel emissions reductions. The DERA funds will be supplemented by North Carolina Volkswagen Mitigation Trust funds.

For more information about the mobile sources diesel emissions reduction grant program, email daq.mscb.ncdaqgrants@ncdenr.gov.

CHAPEL HILL — The North Carolina Coastal Federation and Clean Air Carolina have petitioned the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission seeking state action addressing climate change by joining other states in a cooperative effort to reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of the two nonprofits, filed the petition for rulemaking Monday. The groups called for the adoption of a rule to limit carbon dioxide pollution from the electric power sector in North Carolina.

“With climate change already harming North Carolina, and science telling us we are running out of time to reduce our heat-trapping gas emissions, now is the time to take action,” said Gudrun Thompson, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Whether we act now or delay determines our future as well as the legacy we leave our children and grandchildren. This petition outlines a cost-effective solution that is proven to work and ready to go to protect North Carolina’s economy, environment and people.”

Charlotte-based Clean Air Carolina advocates for solutions to climate change and air pollution. The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review Online, is based in the unincorporated Ocean community in Carteret County and is focused on protecting and restoring the North Carolina coast.

The groups said action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is urgently needed as North Carolinians increasingly feel the impacts of climate change from flooding, slower storms that drop more rain, rising sea levels and warmer and more humid days and nights. They noted scientists’ warnings of more dire consequences for North Carolina’s economy, environment and public health if action is not taken or is delayed.

“A hotter climate causes more extreme weather and higher seas that drown our coast in major floods that occur all too routinely,” said Todd Miller, executive director of the Coastal Federation. “Recovery from these disasters cost taxpayers billions of dollars almost every year. The commission needs to act with urgency to exercise its responsibility to protect and restore our coast from climate turmoil.”

The petition calls for establishing a regional emissions-trading program and participating in the existing Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative implemented by states from New England south through Virginia.

The commission has 120 days to initiate rulemaking or deny the petition.

“Climate change is a health disaster for North Carolina, and one that will only get worse the longer we wait to act,” said June Blotnick, executive director of Clean Air Carolina. “It’s time we use proven, cost-effective strategies and coordinate with other states to efficiently reduce climate emissions across the eastern U.S., protecting the health of our communities and the environment.”

In the proposed emissions-trading program, power plants must buy an allowance for each ton of carbon dioxide pollution they produce. Allowances can be bought and sold in a regional auction, which the groups say will help keep costs down. The number of available allowances is reduced over time to reduce pollution.

States already participating in initiative saw carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector drop 47% over the last decade as well as fewer premature deaths, hospital visits and lost work or school days associated with asthma and other respiratory illnesses, strokes and heart attacks, according to the groups.

A similar approach was used decades ago to successfully reduce aci rain, which was harming and killing fish, wildlife and forests. “That issue is now largely in the past thanks to a cap-and-trade program for nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, the primary causes of acid rain,” the groups said.

Participation in the regional program would also be consistent with Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order No. 80 and the Department of Environmental Quality’s Clean Energy Plan, which sets a goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by 70% by 2030, reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

Last of two parts

RALEIGH — A group of 85 doctors and medical professionals recently wrote Gov. Beverly Perdue expressing alarm that state lawmakers were considering weakening or dismantling the state’s air toxics program.

“Now is not the time to weaken North Carolina’s air toxics program,” said, Dr. Lawrence Raymond, chair of the Medical Advocates for Healthy Air. “Having more toxic pollutants in the air we breathe will only diminish our state’s appeal and will certainly decrease public healthy, especially for children, seniors and those with medical conditions.”

Dr. Lawrence Raymond

Republican legislators in the GOP-controlled N.C. General Assembly are considering changes to the state’s 20-year-old program that would exempt North Carolina’s largest polluters of dangerous airborne chemicals from meeting state standards that are meant to protect people’s health.

If the legislative majority’s “reckless attack” on the air toxics program is successful, the doctors wrote, the changes will be paid for by personal health tragedies and medical expenses by many families in North Carolina. Exposure to air toxins is linked to cancer, pediatric respiratory disease, adult respiratory and cardiac disease and premature death. Children, pregnant women and seniors are most at risk of harm from industrial emissions.

Legislators promoting the changes note that industries that discharge toxic chemicals into the air would still have to meet federal standards. The state program, they argue, duplicates federal law and forces unnecessary expenses on industries in North Carolina. Some of the state’s largest industries and business organizations have been pushing legislators to abolish or greatly modify the state program.

State vs. Federal

But as the doctors pointed out in their letter the state air toxics rules are distinctly different than the technology-based federal programs. Federal air pollution standards focus on improving technology controls while state standards are based on protecting community health.

Federal rules, adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, establish technology controls on an industry-by-industry basis. Regulators determine the pollutants of concern from a given industry. They then decide the most effective air pollution technology to reduce the emissions. The regulations require industries to install pollution controls to achieve an established reduction in air pollutants.

Once the federal pollution controls standards are in place for an industry sector, the federal Clean Air Act requires the EPA to review the effectiveness of the standards every eight years and to conduct residual risk of toxic air emissions posed by an industry.  But EPA is woefully behind in doing the residual risk analysis, state air officials say.

And federal standards do not necessarily cover all sources of emissions from a plant. Federal rules do not require, as the state program does, computer analysis of emissions of an air pollutant and concentration levels at a manufacturer’s property line.

For example, with pulp and paper mills, the federal air pollution rules do not cover 11 compounds such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan. The state does because they are considered a local health threat.

The state air toxics rules also require a facility-wide evaluation and estimation of the concentration of pollutants at the property boundary.

Typically, a plant expansion or addition of new production line will trigger a state requirement that a company do computer modeling to show the emissions will not be harmful to the surrounding community. Some plants must re-analyze their emissions several times within a year if they are constantly adding new production lines that increase emissions, state air officials said. If the analysis shows a plant is exceeding the fence-line concentrations for a given pollutant, the company has to change the design of the plant or eliminate the use of a toxic chemical used in a production process.

“We are often asked to quantify the specific benefits of the air toxics program,” said Mike Abraczinskas, deputy director of the N.C. Division of Air Quality, who acknowledged that it’s difficult to list. “By the time we get an application, they usually have figured it out.”

State Air Quality officials say the state and federal air regulatory programs are complimentary rather than redundant. The state applies standards that weigh health risks to the community, based on scientific studies of a particular chemical.

“It fills a gap where the federal program leaves off,” Abraczinskas said. ‘We have the authority in existing rules that allows us to address unacceptable risks from air toxics.”

As a result of federal and state air regulations, toxic air emissions in North Carolina have steadily declined from more than 120 million pounds a year in 2000 to less than 40 million pounds in 2010, according to EPA data. Electric utilities remain the biggest contributors of air emissions in North Carolina, contributing 40 percent of pollution. Paper mills, such as the Domtar paper mill in Plymouth, contribute 22 percent and chemical manufacturers 13 percent. They are among the industries that are advocating scaling back the state air toxics program.

Born Out of Crisis

North Carolina’s air toxics program had its roots in the environmental concerns of the late 1980s. At the time, many residents of North Carolina were increasingly alarmed about the harmful effects of air pollutants on health. Two projects were feeding their concerns.

ThermalKEM was trying to find a county in North Carolina to accept a large commercial hazardous waste incinerator to dispose of waste from southeastern states. The siting process generated a lot of public anxiety.

Meanwhile, a commercial incinerator in Caldwell County burning waste paints and lacquers from furniture manufacturers was generating one worrisome headline after another. Federal health investigators declared that the Caldwell Systems’ activities posed a public health hazard to workers and the incinerator created a potential health threat to area residents.

Amid these growing public concerns, there was no effective state or federal program regulating toxic air pollutants.

Women in Northampton County in 1991 protest the proposed ThermalKem incinerator. Photo: N.C. Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“We had very limited regulatory tools to deal with an emitter like that,” said Tom Mather, the public information officer for the state Air Quality Division. “EPA had been very slow to develop an air toxics program.”

Gov. Jim Martin and the N.C. General Assembly directed the state Department of Environmental and Natural Resources to develop an air toxics program. The rules adopted in 1990 initially focused on 84 pollutants with an additional 21 pollutants added the following year.

A number of states adopted air toxics programs during this period because the Environmental Protection Agency was behind schedule in adopting federal air toxics rules.

Today, the North Carolina Air Toxic Programs focuses on 97 toxic air pollutants. That includes 21 pollutants that are not covered by the federal air toxics program, including mercury vapors; hydrogen sulfide, a rotten-egg smelling toxic gas that is produced by paper mills and waste ponds; ammonia; and methyl mercaptan, a foul smelling gas produced by pulp mills.

The air toxic rules are developed by a panel of health scientists and toxicologists who study scientific studies about particular chemicals or compounds, then recommend concentrations limits that are safe for people living near the factories.

‘Director Calls’

An important provision of the state air toxics regulations allows the director of the Division of Air Quality to require that a manufacturer, utility or other source of toxic emissions submit computer estimates showing the concentrations of toxic air pollutants at the property are safe.

State air quality regulators issued a series of these “director calls” from 2007 to 2009 after reviewing toxic emissions generated by industrial boilers at 590 facilities statewide. The state’s analysis showed that the industrial boilers at 18 facilities were exceeding state standards for certain toxic pollutants. The air quality director issued directives to the boiler operators requiring them to modify their facilities to comply. Most were able to show compliance by accepting production limits or changing the fuels they were using.

Under the proposed changes to the air toxic rules, the division director would still have the power to issue a director’s call. But if the agency exercises that authority and requires a facility to submit air permit application and make modifications to comply, the division must inform the chairs of the legislature’s Environmental Review Commission of the circumstances surrounding the directive and provide a copy of the written finding.

Weakening of the state’s air toxics program would disproportionately affect Eastern North Carolina because of the presence of a number of the state’s largest producers of air toxics.

Ironically, exempting many types of industries from state air toxics standards also could make it more difficult for prospective industries wishing to locate in a community. A state air permit states that emissions levels are safe to the community beyond the property line.

“That’s an assurance an industry can provide the public,” said Mather. “Without an air toxics program, they are not going to have that to fall back on.”

First of two parts

RALEIGH — Four of the state’s five largest producers of toxic air pollutants are in Eastern North Carolina. Each year, they emit millions of pounds of chemicals that can make people sick or even kill them.

The state has a program designed to control those emissions and protect people’s health.

But North Carolina’s air toxics program now appears at risk.

Some of the state’s largest companies and business and industrial organizations have lobbied Republican lawmakers, who hold a majority in the N.C. General Assembly, to abolish or modify the state program. A bill to kill the program was introduced in the waning days of the legislature last year, but was hurriedly withdrawn after public protest.

Republican legislators now want to scale the program back to remove what they say are overlapping federal and state environmental requirements that cost businesses time and money.

The legislature’s Environmental Review Commission will discuss the proposed changes when it meets Thursday in Raleigh.  A bill to modify the program may be voted on during the legislative session starting in May.

PCS Phosphate in Aurora on the Pamlico River is the state’s largest discharger of toxic air chemicals. It emits more than 4.1 million pounds of toxic air pollutants a year, according to recent state data. The Progress Energy power plant in New Hanover County contributes 2 million pounds of pollutants. A DAK Americas plastics manufacturing plant near Wilmington generates 1.6 million pounds of pollutants, including acetic acid and hydrogen chloride.

PCS was among the five companies that asked the legislature last year to kill or modify the state program that regulates those emissions. The others were Duke Energy; Domtar Paper Co., which operates a pulp mill in Plymouth; Nucor Steel in Hertford; and Evergreen Packaging, which own a paper mill in Canton.

Toxic Risks

Pollutants from manufacturing plants, paper mills and power plants foul the air and waters of Eastern North Carolina and affect public health. People who breathe certain concentrations of air pollutants may be at higher risk of developing cancer and serious respiratory disease.

Mercury settles out in streams and builds up in the tissue of certain fish and can accumulate in humans who eat the fish. Babies born to women who consume fish with high mercury levels may grow up with development problems. The state warns people about eating certain types of fish caught in the Atlantic Ocean and in certain coastal rivers.

Scientists’ understanding of the effects of air pollutants has advanced in recent decades, but the range of health effects is still only partially understood. To safeguard public health, the state of North Carolina has an air toxics program that focuses on nearly 100 toxic air pollutants that are known or suspected of causing cancer and other serious health problems in humans. The program has been in place since 1990 when Jim Martin, a Republican, was governor. It borrows from the concept that good fences make good neighbors.

State Program

The program requires more than 780 manufacturers across North Carolina, from asphalt plants, to chemical manufacturers to papers mills and power companies, control emissions of toxic pollutants at their fence lines. The requirements are site specific.

Under the state program, each regulated manufacturer or power plant must show through computer estimates that by the time combustion gases and emissions waft to the property line, concentrations of any toxic pollutants are so low that people living or working nearby are not at risk.

Rep. Mitch Gillespie

Whenever the plants add new sources of emissions or increase production lines so as to generate more toxic pollutants, they may have to be new computer estimates showing the emissions will not harm the surrounding community beyond their fence line.

“I do think there are things we can do to make it easier for businesses to compete in a worldwide level playing field,” Rep. Mitch Gillespie, co-chairman of the legislature’s Environmental Review Commission, told lawmakers recently. Gillespie is leading the effort to overhaul the state air toxics rules.

Gillespie unveiled a proposal in late February to exempt many manufacturers and industries from the state standards that protect people from toxic air pollutants in the air they breathe. “Even though this bill is a page and a half, it has major implications,” Gillespie told lawmakers. “It may seem short and sweet, but it’s not.”

Industry Pushed Bill

The draft legislation pushed by a consortium of large manufacturers and industry would exempt many if not most of Eastern North Carolina’s large polluters such as paper mills, chemical makers and power plants from complying with the state’s health-based air toxics regulations. Those utilities and manufacturers that are covered by federal air toxics standards would not have to comply with state regulations requiring computer modeling showing that emission levels are safe to the surrounding community.

If Gillespie is successful, Nucor, International Paper in Riegelwood, PCS Phosphate and Domtar Paper Co. would be largely exempt from the state program. Secondary sources of emissions at the plants not addressed by federal air toxics rules might still be covered by the state program. But state air regulators would have to determine that on a case-by-case basis.

At the direction of Republican legislative leaders, officials with the N.C. Division of Air Quality met with representatives of the manufacturers lobbying group, the furniture industry, the power companies and the N.C. Chamber and negotiated proposed changes to state environmental regulations during a series of meetings in recent months.

Gillespie presented the proposed legislation to the Environmental Review Committee as consensus legislation. It’s common for groups that are affected by regulations to offer input on changes to laws.  But typically, all the groups that have a stake in the outcome are invited to take part. But those who might have challenged the consensus, the environmental groups, were shut out of the negotiating process.

“That was my choice not to let them (environmental groups) be part of the original negotiations,” Gillespie told the committee.

“I’ll treat everyone the same from this point forward,” he said.

Preston Howard, president of the Manufacturers and Chemical Industry Council of North Carolina, told a legislative committee that dual regulations by state and federal agencies results in costly permitting delays and reduced the competitiveness of North Carolina industries. He said the group did not want to abolish the state program, but wished to see it overhauled.

Money Talks

Rep. Joe Hackney

Manufacturers and utilities wield influence with state lawmakers by virtue of contributions to legislators and political campaigns.

An analysis by Democracy North Carolina, a nonpartisan watch group, shows that 17 producers of air toxics and their trade groups, led by the Manufacturers and Chemical Industry Council of North Carolina and the N.C. Chamber, spent $5.2 million on state political donations and lobbying the General Assembly during 2009 and 2010. Their spending was more than 10 times the $481,000 spent by 11 major North Carolina environmental groups.

“This is something the manufacturers and utilities have wanted for years and years,” said Rep. Joe Hackney, the Democratic House minority leader and former speaker. “They sat in my speaker’s office and said they did a lot of modeling that was unnecessary.”

Hackney said environmental regulations addressing air and water are incremental in nature. They’re based on the premise that requiring polluters to spend money to reduce emissions will lead to reduced incidence of respiratory disease and other illnesses

A move in the opposite direction to ease the requirements of the North Carolina air toxics program should confront those advocating the idea with some uncomfortable questions.

“How many asthma cases with children do you find acceptable?” Hackney said. “How many deaths during the worst pollution days do you find acceptable?”

Hackney characterized the effort to accommodate manufacturers by rolling back by environmental regulations to compete with other states in the name of economic development as “a race to the bottom.”

The draft legislation directs the state Division of Air Quality to review the air toxics rules to determine if further changes can be made to reduce the regulatory burden on industries while protecting public health. State officials are supposed to provide the results of their review of air toxics rules in November.

Tuesday: Doctors oppose changes; State vs. federal program