This decision contradicts 97 percent of comments received during a hearing and public input process conducted throughout the state this summer. An 80-percent reduction in NOx is the threshold scientists say must be reached to significantly impact the formation of ground level ozone, a pollutant that damages lung and respiratory tissues in people and animals. The NOx pollution in our region originates mostly from outside our state. According to monitoring information gathered by the National Parks Service, coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and the Ohio River Valley account for about 66 percent of the NOx pollution in the Smokies. But, if North Carolina is not willing to raise its own standards to levels that are necessary to reduce ozone pollution, it will be difficult to demand that other states meet those standards.
Air quality is an issue that literally affects literally everyone who lives here.
Like canaries in the old coal mines, Western North Carolina citizens are involuntarily testing the air and finding it alarming. And as important as the health concerns are, pollution also poses an economic threat to the region's tourism. Unfortunately, the nation's most-visited park, the Great Smokies National Park, now has the most polluted air of any national park, according to the Park Service. Where visibility used to be at an average of 60 miles during the summer tourist months, it has been reduced to an average of about 15. The name for the Canary Coalition comes from the use of canaries in coal mines to warn miners of the presence of deadly gases.