Curb Air Pollution for our NE Bays

Let’s Pay Now

“You can pay me now or pay me later” is an old saw immortalized in a TV ad campaign extolling the economic virtues of preventive auto maintenance.  What is true in the care and feeding of our four-wheeled beasts is also true for air pollution’s impacts on Atlantic coastal waters such as Long Island Sound, Narragansett Bay and the Chesapeake. Stopping pollution at its source is much, much cheaper than cleaning up the mess afterward.

In the case of nitrogen—the number one threat to the health of these three waters—the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that it costs about a buck or two to scrub a pound of this pollutant from the tall stacks of power plants in the Ohio Valley and elsewhere to the west.  The costs increase as more and more pounds are removed at the source but even at the 75% reduction level the costs are only $2.44 per pound.  Likewise, nitrogen streaming from car tailpipes can—via a number of different mechanisms—be plucked from the air for about ten dollars per pound..

In sharp contrast, it takes a wad—roughly one hundred and fifty dollars according to EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office—to stop those self-same pounds from washing into rivers and bays once deposited on rooftops, streets and parking lots.  And that wad clearly adds up as our nation’s capitol city is now contemplating installing $1.26 billion dollars worth of infrastructure to get nitrogen and other pollutants out of just one third of DC’s urban runoff.  Extend that figure across the rest of DC and then to all major cities in the eastern airshed with water quality issues and that number quickly outstrips the $6.5 billion estimated cost of removing 70 percent of industrial nitrogen pollution at the source. 

Some on Capitol Hill, the administration and in industry are arguing that comprehensive proposals to regulate airborne pollution or enforce existing standards such as new source review are too expensive and burdensome.  These are roughly the same arguments that they used when they rejected increasing fuel efficiency standards for our cars in the last energy bill. Interesting arguments, but we really need to wonder if we are being well served by policy makers and others who cannot properly discern which of these various options are cheaper.  And the above economic exercise does not even take into account the health costs and human suffering associated with this summer’s spate of bad air days wrecking havoc on our wallets and lungs.

Wind transported pollution from far-removed coal burners and our own cars are certainly not the only sources of air-delivered nitrogen.  We also have local power plants and industries.  Not to mention several hundred million pounds coming from non-airborne sources such as agriculture and under-treated human wastes.  

Taken in total, nitrogen is choking our major Atlantic bay ecosystems.  All three bays are frequent victims of nitrogen-driven algal explosions leading ultimately to oxygen bereft “dead zones” similar to those observed in the Gulf of Mexico.  Given the magnitude of the problem, there is no escaping the fact that we will have to take extraordinary measures in this regard to save the bays we all love and depend on. 

If we ignore the above advice in our own lives, our automobiles will die which would certainly be a major personal tragedy.  But if we get this wrong in regards to air pollution and our beloved bays, the consequences will be devastating and likely unrecoverable.