Augusta gets good grades on air quality

Augusta can breathe a little easier, and cleaner, now.

In the American Lung Association's latest State of the Air air pollution scorecard, which looked at data from 2015 to 2017, Augusta recorded zero high ozone days and only a couple of days where fine particle pollution was a concern, earning it an A grade on ozone and a B on particle pollution.

Georgia as a whole improved on ozone, with only Atlanta-area counties failing to make the grade. The Atlanta area also did slightly worse in the level of overall particle pollution, according to the group. Those gains could be threatened by climate change and by rollbacks to federal protections that are responsible for many of those gains, said June Deen, the senior director for advocacy for the lung association in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Compared with years past, the air is much cleaner in Georgia, said Karen Hays, the chief of the Air Protection Branch at the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.

"Air quality has improved dramatically due to increased controls at industrial sources and power plants, and then also the cars that we drive, the buses that we ride in, even the trains are a lot more efficient and emit less pollution than they did even a decade ago," she said. "All of those things factored together led to improvements in air quality."

That trend is likely to be helped by Georgia Power's request to close two more coal-fired power plants, and the ones remaining "have a lot of air pollution control equipment on them, so there’s been certainly some improvements in air quality associated with the retirement of those older coal plants," Hays said.

Nuclear power plants such as Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, where Georgia Power is adding two new reactors, are emission-free and generated 22 percent of the company's electricity in 2018, said Georgia Power spokesman John Kraft.

Augusta, which in the last report appeared to be trending in the wrong direction in air pollution, seems to be back on track toward cleaner air, Deen said.

"That's a good trend for y'all," she said. "And I'd take it. I know you're pretty diligent in doing your part, so things probably converged to help with that."

The Southeast in general seems to be doing better than some other parts of the country, particularly the Southwest and West Coast, Deen said.

"We attribute that to oil and gas extraction more aggressively and wildfires," she said.

Climate change and hotter weather could make all of that worse, Deen said.

"If we continue to have these warming years, it’s going to be harder to clean up, even with the steps we’ve already taken," she said.

Worse, the Trump administration is looking at rolling back standards for emissions from that oil and gas production, as well as weakening air pollution standards for engines and gasoline, Deen said.

"Those are some of the things that could change that picture quite a bit," she said. "They are looming over us."

Still, it is a good report for Georgia and Augusta, Deen said.

"It is a representation of the good work that has been done over the years in terms of cleaning up the air," she said. "There you have the benefit of it. But if we don’t do something about climate change, we’re going to incrementally lose that benefit."