North Carolina Sues EPA Over Emission Rules

North Carolina sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to block air-quality rules intended to cut by almost 30% the state’s generation of smog-causing nitrogen oxide.

The state challenged the tougher federal requirements, imposed on 22 states from Missouri to Massachusetts, in part by contesting claims that air pollution from North Carolina contributed to smog in the Northeast.

Nitrogen oxide is a component of ozone, an essential part of smog during the summer months. Smog causes respiratory illnesses and exacerbates childhood asthma.

“This problem is far too serious for North Carolina to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fix problems we do not cause,” said Bill Holman, the assistant secretary for environmental protection at the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Gov. James B. Hunt Jr.’s administration proposed an alternative it said would amount to about two-thirds of the pollution reductions the EPA sought.

The substitute package of steps includes increased mass transit spending, new emission restrictions on North Carolina’s five largest electric power plants and legislation limiting vehicle emissions, the state environmental agency said.

The EPA said the states could require emission reductions from any source, including automobiles, but the cheapest way was tighter controls on coal-burners.

North Carolina’s petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., is separate from challenges previously filed by Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia and Ohio. Virginia’s governor said last week that state would join the challenge.