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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

EPA rule targets Big Sky haziness

Plant upgrades’ goal: clear national parks air

Matthew Brown And Matt Volz Associated Press

BILLINGS – Federal regulators have approved a new measure meant to help turn Montana’s Big Sky Country into Clear Sky Country by forcing industrial plants to cut pollutants that make hazy skies over national parks and wilderness areas.

The Environmental Protection Agency rule has been criticized by industry as too costly and by conservationists and other federal agencies as not tough enough.

The goal is to restore visibility to natural conditions in national parks and wilderness areas from Idaho to North Dakota. The official target date is 2064, but EPA officials acknowledge it would take several centuries for some parks and wildernesses under the new rule.

“This is the first step, basically,” EPA regional air program director Carl Daly said Thursday.

To get there, the agency detailed $85 million in upgrades needed within five years at three Montana sites: the Colstrip coal power plant in the southeast, the Ash Grove cement plant near Montana City and the Holcim cement plant near Three Forks.

Including operating expenses over the next 20 years, the total costs to the three plants would top $270 million, EPA officials said Thursday. An alternative proposal that was favored by conservation groups but rejected by the EPA would have cost Colstrip an additional $120 million plus.

The upgrades would reduce industrial emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The two pollutants react with the atmosphere and cause the air to appear hazy above some of the nation’s prized public lands, including Yellowstone, Glacier and Theodore Roosevelt national parks.

But conservationists complain the upgrades being required in Montana don’t do nearly enough. They point out that it would take hundreds of years for some sites to reach the EPA goal.

The National Park Service said EPA regulators overestimated the potential costs of more advanced pollution controls that could have further cut emissions. The U.S. Forest Service said the rules jeopardized Montana’s chances of meeting the 2064 goal.

Many other states have been devising their own haze-reduction plans, but Montana chose to let the federal government take the lead. Some states and utilities elsewhere say the five-year timeline for compliance is too short.

Any legal challenge to Wednesday’s rule must be filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals within 60 days of its publication. Montana retains the option of coming up with its own rule subject to final EPA approval, Daly said.