The recent US Environmental Protection Agency appeal to West Virginia and 21 other states to cut the transport of smokestack pollution into neighboring states has raised the concerns of some state industries that it’s not fair.

But the critics are wrong. The proposal is fair, both to the citizens of West Virginia and their downwind neighbors.

This summer’s air data shows that West Virginia’s upwind neighbors – those states blowing pollution in our direction – are doing to you what you are doing to other states. West Virginians breathed unhealthy air one of every three days since June, as reported by state air monitors in Charleston, Greenbrier County, Huntington, Vienna, Weiton and Wheeling.

A lot of this pollution came from Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

On the other hand, West Virginia industry – particularly its coal-fired power plants – exports a huge amount of its pollution to neighbors in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC, making their unhealthy air worse.

EPA’s call for West Virginia to cut nitrogen oxide pollution in half in five years is no more than asking West Virginia to do its fair share in solving this serious air pollution problem.

It’s fair to West Virginians, who are entitled to breathe clean, healthy air. And it’s fair to people in down wind states like Pennsylvania, who have been working hard for many years to eliminate air pollution.

Since 1990, Pennsylvania utilities have spent almost $500 million to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. And Pennsylvania will require even more reductions next year. Yet Pennsylvanians pay no more for electricity today than they did a decade ago.

In West Virginia, the average cost of clean air is expected to be no more than one percent of a monthly electric bill. That’s an extra dollar on a $100 monthly bill.

Why are nitrogen oxides a problem? The sun bakes nitrogen oxides from power plants into ozone smog. Short-term exposure to smog triggers asthma attacks and breathing problems. Long-term exposer chronically impairs your lungs and lowers your immunity to disease.

Is this a health problem? You bet you life it is.

High ozone levels in the air are unhealthy for everyone, but particularly dangerous for those with respiratory ailments, such as asthma and emphysema. Ten to twenty percent of all respiratory-related hospital visits in the northeastern United States can be attributed to ozone pollution.

Children playing outdoors, and even healthy adults exercising at high ozone times, experience reduced lung function. The lung damage caused by high ozone levels is like a sunburn on your lungs that can be irreversible. This damage can accumulate over a person’s lifetime.

The lobbyists will tell you that cleaning up the smokestacks mens there will be no market for West Virginia coal, and all the miners will lose their jobs. It’s just not true. West Virginia’s huge coal reserves are a powerful magnet for electric utilities. They make electricity here because the coal is here.

Another deception is that West Virginia is being blamed for smog caused by cars and industries in the Northeast. Also untrue. While auto exhaust contributes to smog formation, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia have mandatory auto emissions inspections which help to eliminate pollution.

West Virginians should not be deceived by special interests who put healthy profits over the public health. The cost of reducing nitrogen oxide smokestack emissions is affordable – it’s done in many other states – and the electric industry can profit from selling clean electricity.

What these downwind stats cannot control is the pollution blowing in from West Virginia and the Midwest.

Anyone who doubts West Virginia’s contribution to ozone smog problems in downwind states should consider these facts:

• West Virginia power plants spew more nitrogen oxides into the air than all the power plants in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and DC combined.

• Coal-fired power plants in Midwestern and Southern states emit more than 5.5 times as many nitrogen oxides as the coal-fired power plants in Northeastern states.

• For each dollar in gross state product, West Virginia generates five times as much nitrogen-oxide pollution as our neighbors in Pennsylvania

The big polluters know that if they can avoid cleaning up their pollution, the burden will fall on the people, the factories, and the small businesses of West Virginia.

Ironically, it is cheaper to eliminate nitrogen oxides from power plants – EPA estimates $1500 per ton – than from cars ($3400) or small businesses (as high as $10,000 per ton).

By doing their fair share to eliminate the pollution they cause, West Virginia electric utilities can shield car owners and small businesses from the higher cost of eliminating pollution car by car and business by business.

The EPA’s call for cleaner, healthier air – which, incidentally, has no connection with the Kyoto global warming treaty, as industry lobbyists falsely state – is flexible and fair. It would allow companies to trade pollution credits, and leaves it up to each state to decide how it will meet the health-based standard of the Clean Air Act.

It just doesn’t get any fairer than that.