City air won't meet new rules (probably not with Hudson Yards)

Subject: City air won't meet new rules (probably not with Hudson Yards)
Date: 12/19/2004 2:44:40 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)



City air won't meet new rules
NY Daily News
BY OWEN MORITZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Small particles, big problems.

All of New York City and its suburbs are in violation of new air-quality
health standards, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday. The
problem is microscopic but dangerous soot from diesel-burning trucks, power plants and other sources. "This is not a story about the air getting
dirtier," outgoing EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt said. "It is a story
about higher, more stringent standards and healthier air."

The state environmental conservation commissioner, Erin Crotty, said that
in the city only Manhattan south of midtown and the South Bronx exceeded federal standards, and she vowed they'd be in compliance before a 2010 deadline. She also partly disputed the feds' findings in telling the Daily News that Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland counties meet U.S. guidelines.

Crotty said New York had approved initiatives to control acid rain and
emissions at power plants, and had passed anti-idling laws on vehicles, as
well as other anti-pollutant regulations. "We are aware [of the EPA report]
and we are doing something about it," she said.

Leavitt said 223 counties nationwide - in New York, New Jersey, 18 other
states and the District of Columbia - don't meet new air-quality health
standards, which for the first timeregulated fine particles - soot that's
2.5 micrometers in diameter, or 30 times smaller than human hair.

Originally published on December 18, 2004