Nitrogen, Ozone Levels Up for the Northeast
By Kim Forrest
WASHINGTON–As New Hampshire’s ozone levels hit their highest mark for this early in the year in 20 years of readings, a new study showed that increased nitrogen pollution not only is raising the ozone readings but is damaging the state’s forests and waterways as well.
On Tuesday, ozone levels were the highest they’ve been this early in the year during the two decades the state has been monitoring them, according to the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. The previous earliest date that pollution approached what the state calls “unhealthy levels” was on April 29, 1984. Ozone is a by-product of nitrogen pollution and is accentuated by warm temperatures.
Throughout the state, the ozone levels came very close to exceeding the eight-hour health standard, with the highest levels in Laconia and high levels at the air-monitoring system at Pack Monadnock Mountain, said Jeff Underhill, a state air quality analyst. Last summer was an “unprecedented” ozone year for New Hampshire, with five consecutive days of harmful levels in August, he said.
“This episode is from pure out-of-state transport,” Underhill said, pointing the finger at the large East Coast cities of New York, Philadelphia and Boston as well as at the Midwest and the West. Other New England states also experienced high ozone levels.
New Hampshire is one of 10 states challenging new federal regulations that state officials contend would exempt some industries, including coal-fired power plants, from Clean Air Act requirements to reduce emissions.
Underhill said the ozone levels “jump up and jump down.” He said the monitoring system has detected levels that exceeded both the one-hour and the eight-hour ozone standards several times in one week. Although ozone levels are heightened by the presence of sunlight – he called ozone a “summertime pollutant” — the levels will remain high at night if a great deal of pollution is coming from other regions of the country, Underhill said.
“That’s often the case in New Hampshire,” he said. “We’re at the tail end of the exhaust pipe.”
Emissions from automobiles and utility plants are the source of the harmful nitrogen pollution analyzed by the Hanover-based Hubbard Brook Research Foundation (HBRF) in a study released Tuesday.
According to Kathy Fallon Lambert, spokeswoman for HBRF, forests and waterways in the Northeast, such as the White Mountains and the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire, are experiencing increased nitrogen levels.
While forests need nitrogen to grow, too much of it can harm the soil, decrease tree growth and produce acidic runoff to water sources. As a result, 15 percent of New England’s lakes have become acidic, killing fish and wildlife.
Nitrogen pollution also has contributed to the release of ground-level ozone, which harms plants. It also has exposed about 26 million people in the Northeast to high ozone levels.
According to the HBRF study, 39 percent of nitrogen emissions are from vehicles and 26 percent from utility plants.
Sewage also is causing more pollution, the study reported. It said that as much as 81 percent of the nitrogen pollution in watersheds comes from human sewage, or wastewater. That, in turn, reduces the level of oxygen in the water and kills fish. David Whitall, the study’s co-author, said people are contributing to pollution simply by consuming meat and dairy products, which contain nitrogen. He said that while equipment is available to remove nitrogen from wastewater, most treatment plants do not have the technology.
“So a lot of this nitrogen is making it from your kitchen table into the streams and, eventually, the estuaries,” Whitall said.
The study also said current public policy is not enough to control the damage.
“We know that the current regulation of the 1990 Clean Air Act is not adequate to bring about recovery from this problem,” Lambert said. She added that some legislation in Congress, including a clean-air amendment sponsored by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), would reduce emissions.
New Hampshire Attorney General Peter Heed, who read the HBRF study, said it demonstrates that action must be taken to reduce pollution.
“We believe the nitrogen study provides the evidence that we really have to do something to decrease nitrogen emissions blowing into New Hampshire,” he said in an interview. “These emissions really continue to hurt the New Hampshire environment. It’s going to take decades to recover.”
He added that while he recognizes that it might be expensive for power plants to install equipment to reduce emissions, failing to do so would have a negative economic impact on the Granite State.
“Certainly I understand economic arguments about the cost of making improvements to power plants, [but] they pale in comparison to the economic harm to New England states, namely New Hampshire,” he said. “We’re very dependent on tourism, for maple sugaring…our lakes and rivers are recreational.”
Published in The Keene Sentinel, in New Hampshire.
