Both the need for state-level policy innovation and the barriers to it mark the air quality challenge in the Northeast, where the 12 states in the Ozone Transport Commission, created by the Clean Air Act, must coordinate a regional air management plan stretching from Washington to Boston. Three years ago, EDF developed model state legislation with the Illinois EPA for a NOx trading program using state strategies to meet Federal standards. Last year, Maryland air quality regulators embraced this EDF approach. The Maryland officials then led their counterparts in the Ozone Transport Commission to adopt the EDF design as a way to meet a commitment to limit total NOx emissions to a specified level. Smog is a Regional Issue Overcoming the idea that smog is a problem confined to relatively small areas has opened the way to this innovation.
Scientists now view the urban smog problem as a problem of broad regions.
Metropolitan smog is the product not just of emissions within city limits but of emissions traveling hundreds of miles from distant sources. We now know that this long-distance transport of emissions seriously hinders any individual state's ability to insure that its citizens breathe healthful air. Naturally, some political leaders see in long-distance transport a new opportunity to look elsewhere for emissions reductions to ease the potential economic burden on their own states. The result has been the beginning of regional finger pointing between the East and the Midwest that threatens to block air quality progress. Fortunately, environmental officials from all states east of the Mississippi are meeting to develop a coordinated strategy to address both environmental protection and cost reduction.