By Dan Klepal
and James Pilcher
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Trent Lewis of the Air Quality Management Division, Hamilton County Environmental Services, monitors local ozone and NOx (nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide) levels from his Corryville office. The Cincinnati Enquirer/GARY LANDERS

Greater Cincinnati's air could be cleaner within a few years under tough new standards that go into effect this week.

Cleaner air could mean fewer trips to the emergency room for children with asthma, less chance of lung disease for everyone and a reprieve from the haze that descends over the Ohio Valley in the summer. Environmentalists say millions could be saved in health-care costs.

But in return, the region's residents could pay more to heat or cool their homes, drive their cars, get their clothes dry-cleaned or paint their dining rooms. And, business leaders warn, jobs could be lost.

This balance of costs and benefits will be the focus of some of the most intense debate over how to clear the skies since the federal Clean Air Act was passed in 1970.

Starting Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will lower the allowable levels of two key air pollutants - ozone, or smog, and particulate matter. In addition, states will be forced to measure for those pollutants over longer periods of time - eight hours per day compared to the old standard of one hour per day - making it even more difficult to comply with the new law.

The EPA also will name every county across the nation that is violating the new standards.

That announcement, in turn, starts a clock ticking: States will have three years to draw up a plan to ensure their counties come into compliance by 2009.

BAD AIR CAUSES

New clean-air rules will deal with these two pollutants:  Ozone: A lung and eye irritant - oxygen with an extra electron -- that causes difficulty in breathing, can aggravate asthma and reduces resistance to lung infections and colds. It also can inhibit plant growth, cause widespread damage to crops and forests, and can damage building materials, such as paint or rubber on cars. It's created when vehicle and power-plant emissions are cooked by sunlight and heat. Health officials most often post ozone warnings in the summer, when dirty, slow-moving air masses stall over Greater Cincinnati.  Particulate matter: A generic term used for small pollutants suspended in the air. Those pollutants can be a combination of things such as heavy metals, dirt, dust, ashes and soot. It comes from utility and factory smokestacks, vehicle exhaust, mining, construction and agriculture. The finest of these particles, which come primarily from power plants and diesel engines, are a fraction of the diameter of a human hair. They are easily inhaled deeply into the lungs, where they stay for long periods of time. A recent American Lung Association study showed a 17 percent increase in mortality risk in areas with higher concentrations of fine particles. Sources: Enquirer research; American Lung Association ; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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Unlike previous anti-pollution efforts, "these choices will be harder because they'll be more personal for people," says Bill Spires, a meteorologist with the Ohio EPA.

Seven Greater Cincinnati counties - Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont in Ohio; and Boone, Campbell and Kenton in Kentucky - probably will be found in violation of the new standard for ozone, an invisible gas and known lung irritant that is the main component of smog. These counties already are in violation.

In addition, two counties that meet standards now - Dearborn in Indiana and Clinton in Ohio - probably won't under the new rules.

Nearly everyone agrees the implications could be enormous.

"We are going to remove more pollution in a quicker amount of time than we ever have," EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt said on a recent visit to Cincinnati. "But it will not be easy. Some of this is going to be strong medicine."

Waiting for a menu

Precisely what will have to be done to meet the standards won't be known until after Thursday.

"The governor has asked me what we will be required to do, and I can't tell him yet," says Chris Jones, director of the Ohio EPA. "Everything is on the table."

His counterpart in Kentucky agrees.

"It's hard to tell people what the remedies will be when we've not been given the recipe ourselves," says John Lyons, director of the Division of Air Quality of the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection.

EPA's assessment of how badly states fail to meet the new standards will help them decide which methods they will use to comply.

When the Clean Air Act was amended in 1990, Southwest Ohio officials picked vehicle-emissions testing (sometimes called E-check) to help lower pollution. Counties also put caps on gas pumps to prevent vapors from drifting into the atmosphere and ordered utilities and industries to reduce the amount of emissions from smokestacks.

Northern Kentucky chose to impose emission tests and industrial controls, too. It also required the sale of cleaner-burning but more expensive reformulated gasoline.

The strategies worked. The region had only two violations of the old ozone standard in 2003.

But under the new tougher standards, the region would have exceeded limits 43 times.

Pick your targets

To meet the new standards, states may end up tightening existing programs as well as looking for new pollution-cutting measures.

Ohio, for example, could require the sale of reformulated fuel.

Potentially, the states could choose to:

• Require cleaner versions of house paint, which could cost consumers more.

• Crack down on cleaners to cut emissions of dry-cleaning fluid, another known pollutant. Cleaning companies say smaller operations could be put out of business.

• Build a light-rail system. The problem here is that Hamilton County voters last year rejected a light-rail tax, and mass transit has become highly politicized. Some politicians argue that building more highway lanes would prevent traffic jams that produce emissions when cars idle. But environmentalists argue that more lanes will only encourage more people to stay in more cars - causing more traffic and more emissions.

• Expand the region's bus system with alternative-powered, cleaner-fueled vehicles. An expanded bus system would cost much less than light rail, but still would be expensive.

• Coordinate regional land-use planning to help control sprawl, thus cutting the region's dependence on cars. Some suburban politicians may find this unappetizing.

• Institute tougher E-check systems. Drivers hate the system that's in place now.

California has turned to even more stringent measures, such as restricting when people can cut their grass or fill up their cars. Those measures are unlikely here because pollution isn't as bad and smog is mostly limited to summer.

If standards aren't met, federal officials have authority to cut off transportation funds for building expressways and other projects to a region or state.

The government had done this, but only once - taking money from the Atlanta area until it acted to reduce its pollution.

Biggest disagreement

The debate over what to do ultimately may boil down to whether the government should crack down further on vehicle emissions, get stricter with utilities and industry, or some combination of the two.

George Leikauf, an environmental health professor at the University of Cincinnati, represents one side of the argument. Health studies have shown conclusively that long-term exposure to lower levels of ozone and particulate matter is just as damaging as exposure to high levels of the pollutants, he says. He thinks auto emissions will be reduced by better emission systems and low-sulfur fuel.

That leaves power plants to tackle as the last major source of pollutants, he says.

"If you cleaned up the power plants in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, you'd save 80 to 90 percent of our (violations)," Leikauf says. "This is everybody's problem. There will be a cost, but I think people will be willing to share in them."

Cinergy spokesman Steve Brash says it's unfair to single out power plants that already have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on pollution controls. Cinergy also has been negotiating with the U.S. Justice Department since 2000 to settle a lawsuit that would require the utility to install billions in additional pollution controls.

"We can't just address one source and hope the problem goes away," Brash says. Rates will go up if another round of emission controls are mandated, he says.

Cinergy isn't the only business worried about new standards.

Four companies recently chose not to relocate here because of the region's air-quality controls, Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce president Michael Fisher said earlier this month.

"We are in a global competitive marketplace with countries that do not have such regulations, such as India and China," said U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, who filed suit as Ohio governor against ozone rules in 1990.

E-mail jpilcher@enquirer.com and dklepal@enquirer.com