Sen. Mitchell’s Hometown Ponders Effects of Clean Air Act He Sponsored : Environment: Auto inspections will cost more in Maine city. Polluters face big fees. Total ramifications of the law are not yet understood.

Car inspections will cost about $15 a year more, gasoline stations will need vapor-catching pumps, and more than 90 local companies--from paper mills to hospitals--will be required to pay up to $100,000 annually under the nation’s tough new clean air law.

That is just some of the impact of the Clean Air Act on Portland, the home of the law’s chief proponent, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell.

Because Portland, like so many other cities, struggles with an ozone problem and factory pollutants, it serves as a good example of how the act will affect cities across the country.

While the Environmental Protection Agency prepares regulations under the sweeping legislation, state and local officials, factories and businesses are assessing the impact.

“This is a very aggressive act,” said Dennis Keschl, director of the bureau of air quality control in Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection. “There are a lot of interesting provisions, and we haven’t found them all.”

As in several towns and cities in Maine, the pungent smell of a paper mill--a sharp odor not unlike cooking cabbage--often wafts over the Portland area.

The paper industry is just one of many that will be hit by the law’s stricter enforcement measures, regulations on releasing toxic chemicals and higher fees for state permits allowing them to pollute the air, Keschl said.

The new law authorizes states to begin charging factories and other polluters an annual fee of $25 for every ton of a pollutants they put into the atmosphere up to 4,000 tons, or a maximum of $100,000, Keschl said.

In Cumberland County, he said, 92 companies will have to pay some amount of the new fee, from the S.D. Warren paper mill in Westbrook to Maine Medical Center in Portland.

“Remember, they’re being charged per ton of pollutants, so there’s an incentive to reduce the amount they pollute,” Keschl said.

Mitchell, a Democrat who lives in Portland when he’s not in Washington, said the law’s major effect on his hometown will be to reduce pollution from cars and trucks.

Portland is one of more than 50 cities across the country in which drivers will have to have their cars inspected to make sure that pollution-control devices work properly.

State officials estimate that the requirement will increase the cost of a driver’s annual safety inspection by $15, Keschl said.

The new law will also require many gasoline stations in Portland and other cities with an ozone-pollution problem to install a new type of pump with a dual-hose nozzle designed to keep vapors from escaping when a car is fueled.

“This is important to reduce not only volatile organic compounds but human exposure to benzene, which is a component of gasoline and is known to be a carcinogen in humans,” Mitchell said.

Gene Guilford, president of the Maine Oil Dealers Assn., estimated that 100 service stations in the Portland area would have to install the new pumps, at a cost of $30,000 a station.

“Ultimately, I would guess that companies will try to pass on as much of the cost to the consumer as possible,” he said.

The changes do not have to be made for two to three years, Keschl noted. The act gives the EPA one year to write regulations for enforcing the law; states then have two years to institute the regulations.

The law is so new, so complex and so long--the final legislation totaled more than 1,100 pages--that officials in Maine and even Washington aren’t certain of all its effects.

“We’ve got lawyers struggling over it right now, trying to figure it out,” said Dave Ryan, an EPA spokesman in Washington. “It’s going to generate hundreds of regulations between now and the turn of the century.”

The act imposes strict measures to combat acid rain, smog and toxic industrial pollution, and it has generated stiff opposition from industries nationwide, Ryan said.

“All I’ve been enduring for the past several weeks is criticism,” he said.

A major section takes aim at ozone, the most pervasive air pollutant in Maine. It is created by the chemical reaction that takes place when sunlight hits pollutants in the atmosphere.

“A large part of the problem we face comes in from states upwind of us--New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts,” Keschl said.

Under the law, state environmental officials must work to ensure that ozone levels do not go higher than the federal limit of 0.12 parts per million.

Maine already has a stricter limit of 0.08 parts per million, but Portland’s ozone levels are nearly double that, at 0.156 p.p.m., Keschl said.

As a result, ozone pollution in the Portland metropolitan area is ranked “moderate” by the EPA. Ryan, the EPA spokesman, said 31 other metro areas in the country have a moderate pollution ranking.

The Portsmouth-Dover-Rochester metropolitan area along the Maine-New Hampshire border has a “serious” rating, the highest in Maine, Keschl said. Fifteen other metro areas in the country have serious ratings, eight have “severe” ratings and one, Los Angeles, is in a class by itself--”extreme,” Ryan said.

The primary contributors to the creation of ozone are nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, both of which come from auto pollution.

Also, the law lists 189 pollutants considered toxic. Companies that release those chemicals are required to install the “maximum available” pollution-control devices to reduce the emissions.

Although environmental officials have not determined all of the law’s effects, Mitchell said it definitely will improve the environment.

“The result, we hope, will be cleaner air,” he said.