Print edition: 
This has been a big year for cleaner air in the Midwest, because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken several long-overdue steps.
In October, EPA finalized the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, a Clean Air Act standard designed to prevent pollution from power plants in one state from crossing borders and harming health and air quality in downwind states. The result will protect hundreds of millions of Americans, providing up to $280 billion in benefits by preventing tens of thousands of premature deaths, asthma and heart attacks, and millions of lost days of school or work due to illness.
This month, EPA will put in place Mercury and Air Toxics Standards — or MATS — a second important effort to protect Midwesterners and all Americans from toxic air pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases from power-plant smokestacks.
Taken together, MATS and the cross-state rule launch the next phase in the Clean Air Act’s 40-year record of creating a healthier, more prosperous nation.
When EPA rolls out the mercury rule, it will end more than two decades of delay and uncertainty that utilities have faced since Congress directed the agency to set standards reducing toxic air emissions. Today, 44 percent of coal-powered plants don’t use modern pollution-control technology. EPA’s rules will level the playing field for plants that have already installed, or are planning to invest in, air-pollution controls to meet the updated clean-air safeguards, thus closing a competitive gap and strengthening the market for cleaner electricity production.
Beginning in 2012, EPA will expand the cross-state rule’s proven air-quality standards to Kansas and help our downwind neighbors better control pollution emitted by power companies in our area. Utilities serving more than 2 million Kansans have sued to block EPA’s cross-state rule. The utilities asked EPA to retract our new rules before Jan. 1. If not, the power companies have threatened brownouts, rolling blackouts and targeted service interruptions to big industries.
Kansans should know that in EPA’s 40-year history, there have been no instances in which the Clean Air Act has contributed to electric grid reliability problems, and should any arise, the Clean Air Act gives us the tools to address them on a case-by-case basis.
EPA’s analysis and studies by other utility groups have indicated that it will be largely the oldest, dirtiest plants that shut down because they would no longer make economic sense to continue operations. Our analysis shows there is adequate power-generating capacity remaining.
For more than 40 years, the Clean Air Act’s commonsense pollution controls have made our families healthier by promoting economic competition and innovation. With two important updates to the Clean Air Act in 2011, we are working to write the next chapter in that history of success.
