Clean air. What are the problems here? The environmentalists say we are killing ourselves, our babies and our environment by allowing utility companies, vehicle manufacturers and others to spew poisons into the atmosphere, and to avoid the clean-up laws that have been on the books for one-quarter of a century.

Utility company representatives ask, "What bad air? We've been scrubbing it since 1970 when the Clean Air Act passed. What about automobile emissions and all the other emissions?"

You can fall down on either side you want to in this battle, but eventually you are going to have to take a side. Congress is about to see to that. You do have a dog in this fight. Your health, and your pocketbook.

In the next few weeks and months, the men and women elected to make these decisions in Washington will map out future energy standards by giving the green light for construction of at least 1,900 new utility plants.

And before the cement mixes, the venerable Clean Air Act, passed in 1970 and first amended in 1990 and strengthened again in 1997, is either about to hold up, or get changed to something that has the ring of clear skies, clean power or clean smokestacks to it. And then, again, maybe even something altogether new will happen.

Clean air. The issues are as many and multiple as they are complex. What to do?

Here are some of the problems, controversies and a few experts who venture ideas about the issues and possible fixes that have become badminton fodder.

The EPA's most recent findings on national ambient air quality show that since 1970, overall emissions of the six principal pollutants have been reduced by 29 percent. At the same time, the Gross Domestic Product has jumped more than 150 percent, energy consumption has increased by 45 percent and more people are driving their automobiles more miles, up more than 140 percent.

And in spite of the money and technological improvements, the EPA estimates that over 160 million tons of pollutants are emitted each year into the air we breathe. More than 120 million people, half the nation's population, live in areas where monitored air was listed as unhealthy because of the six principal pollutants.

Indeed, Knox County's air is some of the worst in the nation. The EPA's own studies show that Knoxville's sulfur dioxide emissions are higher than Atlanta; Baton Rouge, La.; Charleston, W.Va.; Dallas; El Paso, Texas; Gary, Ind. (at one time the most polluted city in the nation); Jersey City, N.J.; Los Angeles; Memphis; and Nashville.

And although Knox County is below the national nitrogen oxide emission regulation at the moment, nitrogen oxides can spread ozone hundreds of miles and since 1970 those emissions have increased by nearly 20 percent. The increase, the EPA says, is mainly due to "non-road" engines in construction, diesel vehicles, recreational vehicles and power plants.

Call it urban-sprawl-and-fun-in-the-sun pollution syndrome: big earth-moving machines belching diesel as they gulp down and push aside more land for subdivisions, shopping malls and highways.

This past June, the General Accounting Office, Congress' watchdog, reported that the nation's oldest and dirtiest power plants, about 17,000 of them, released twice as much sulfur dioxide into the air than did the newer more modern plants.

This report was issued just as the Bush administration offered the Clear Skies initiative, which would relax costly air pollution regulations when old utilities are repaired, maintained or expanded. The New Source Review portion of the Clean Air Act - whichsays that if old power plants modernize in any way, they must meet the Clean Air Act standards - would be eliminated under Clear Skies.

This brought a howl from environmental groups and some U.S. senators, mainly Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vermont, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Jeffords and Lieberman have introduced legislation that delights the environmental policy wonks and gives the willies to the business and power communities.

Jeffords' cleverly named Clean Power Act, stops the Clear Air Act rollbacks, creates strong safeguards and at the same time includes market incentives for new, clean-energy technologies.

There are major differences between the Bush administration's Clear Skies and Jeffords' Clean Power bills. Essentially, the Jeffords bill requires 75 percent reductions in nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide by 2007, whereas Clear Skies puts in 67 and 75 percent reductions, respectively, by 2018. Both proposals continue the cap and trade system, but the Jeffords bill also addresses carbon dioxide, the principal culprit in global warming. Clear Skies leaves that out.

Environmental critics say the Bush proposal, promoted by Whitman and U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., on their combined trip to the Smokies, delays other pollution reductions required under the Clean Air Act for up to a decade.

The Bush plan also allows 50 percent more sulfur emissions than current law, critics claim.

Whitman counters by promoting the Bush plan as one that will reduce emissions in a more effective and less costly way than the Jeffords or other plans. One reason for that, she says, is that Clear Skies allows the marketplace to work and because the Clear Skies initiative "rides on top of the Clean Air Act. It doesn't do away with it."

The GAO says the aging plants emit about 12.7 pounds of sulfur dioxide for each megawatt-hour of electricity produced. The new plants generate about 6.4 pounds of sulfur dioxide. Worst offenders were the power plants in the Southeast, Midwest and mid-Atlantic states.

More than half of the nation's fossil-fuel power plants were built before 1972, including the Tennessee Valley Authority. In addition, even though there has been a 29 percent drop in overall pollution, smog, which is caused by sunlight and heat reacting with emissions, has actually worsened in the Southeast and in the north.

Lung disease, says North Carolina physician Dr. Clay Ballentine, is a killer and it is on the increase in this region. The American Lung Association, which does not completely connect the dots between air pollution with the explosion in asthma, says some 24 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with asthma. That is costly, running an estimated $12 billion annually in health costs.

"We are losing the battle against lung disease," says Ballentine, a private physician of internal medicine, treating patients with lung disease. He lives and works in Asheville, and is heavily involved in the national debate on clean air.

"The top three killers in the nation are cardiovascular diseases, cancer and lung disease. Absolutely, cancer and lung disease are linked to air quality," he says.

"Overall we are gaining ground on cancer and cardiovascular disease, but we are losing ground on lung disease. The death rates from lung disease are going up," he says.

"There is an epidemic of asthma, especially childhood asthma. It has risen in incidence in the past 20 years or so. And it is not just the incidence of childhood asthma. Every aspect of asthma has gone up at least 50 percent, some up over 100 percent," says Ballentine.

"Also, the pediatric death rate of asthma has gone up over 100 percent over the past two decades."

Ballentine says two large epidemiological studies from southern California show that children who spend more time outdoors in heavy concentrations of ozone develop more asthma.

"So ozone not only worsens existing asthma, it actually causes asthma in children," he says.

Ballentine's critics says even though he is a physician treating patients with respiratory and cardiac disease as well as lung cancer, his findings are not backed up by solid science.

Another study shows that children who grow up in ozone-laden air similar to the air in this region have a 11 percent decrease in their lung function, says Ballentine.

When we are born, our lungs continue to grow and to expand until we reach about age 12, at which time it is a set rate of growth. Around age 20, the aging process begins and lung function starts its slow decline.

"What we are doing is capping lung development at lower levels, so they are starting decline from an already compromised point. This generation of children is being visited with a huge burden with premature lung disease as they age," Ballentine says.

"If you live in air polluted areas, you give up one to three years in life expectancy as compared to a clean air area," he says. "That is about the same as living with a cigarette smoker. It is the same as the numbers for second-hand smoke. Cigarette smokers lose four to six years off their lives. Those exposed to second-hand smoke lose two to three years and those in air-polluted areas lose one to three years," he says.

"So air pollution exposure does not make them die a couple of days earlier. This is shaving years off life expectancy."

The Tennessee Valley Authority is the nation's largest utility. It operates 11 coal-fired plants, seven in Tennessee. It serves more than 8 million customers in seven states. And since it is the biggest kid on the energy block, it attracts close scrutiny.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy for the Tennessee Clean Air Task Force has been dogged in its self-appointed watchdog role over TVA's plant operations. In its second report card on the agency, the alliance gives TVA good marks for taking "leadership through its voluntary commitment to reducing smog forming nitrogen oxides."

But the environmental groups still say it is one of the nation's largest polluters and "meet(s) only the bare minimum of required sulfur dioxide emission reductions."

"All the data indicates that things are getting better," says John Shipp, general manager for Environmental Policy and Planning at TVA.

"As an example, five or seven years ago, several locations in the Tennessee Valley did not meet ambient air quality standards. Now there are no places that don't meet the standards.

"Ozone concentrations are going down. Actually they are up and down with the weather."

Over time, Shipp says, the state's ambient air quality has improved "remarkably. That's in spite of the fact that there has been a lot of development, a more of us are here, we drive more miles and we use more electricity than we used to."

Dr. Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, says Tennesseans use more energy per capita than any other people in the nation.

Shipp says polluting emissions from power plants are down, and now the nation is suffering more from automobile emissions than from coal-fired plants.

He cites TVA's statistics to back up his claim: In 1976, TVA emitted 2.3 million tons of sulfur dioxide. Last year, those emissions were down to 600,000 tons.

"So in addition to providing much more electricity to many more people, we have reduced our sulfur dioxide emissions and we have a plan to further reduce those emissions," he says.

He says TVA will build five more scrubbers for the fossil plants in Paradise, Ky., Colbert, Ala., Bull Run and Kingston. Two of the new scrubbers are destined for Kingston.

As for nitrogen oxide, Shipp says TVA began a program to reduce those emissions in 1995.

"When we complete that program at the end of 2005 we will have reduced (nitrogen oxide emissions) by 75 percent. Sulfur dioxide will be reduced by 85 percent," he says.

TVA will spend about $2.7 billion on this program. The program, he says, will cost TVA $1 million a day for the remainder of the decade.

"This is part of our clean air strategy for complying with the regulations of the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions for the protection of public health and the environment in the Tennessee Valley and surrounding region," Shipp says.

Currently, there are no requirements to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. However, even here, he says TVA is doing things such as upgrading its hydroelectric plants, "and in doing so, we are increasing their capacity to produce more electricity, and that is without carbon dioxide."

As for mercury, Shipp says there are some reductions in the heavy metal when controls are put in place on other emissions, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

"It is not the same everywhere. It depends on the type of coal you are burning, the configuration of the boilers and the order you have your controls. In some cases, mercury emissions will be reduced by the things we are doing to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide."

But right now, there are no requirements to reduce mercury emissions, Shipp says.

In the end, Shipp says it is TVA's business to "produce electricity reliably and at a low cost for 8.5 million people in the Tennessee Valley in a way that is environmentally responsible.

"That is what we are all about."

Fred Brown can be reached at 342-6427 or brownf@knews.com

Copyright 2002 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. Click for permission to reprint