The new year starts out where the old year ended with opponents fighting to block the Obama Administration’s tough new environmental rules to reduce cross-state air pollution from power plants in 27
states.

The Associated Press reports that industrial critics won a delay on Friday when a federal court put on hold the controversial EPA regulations that are under challenge by more than a dozen electric power companies, municipal power
plant operators. 

Six states— Texas, Nebraska, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, and Ohio — had
asked the court for the delay pending resolution of litigation challenging the new rules.  All  six would have had to reduce pollution
from their power plants under the new EPA rules. They were joined by Ames,
Iowa, local power plant operators and power generating companies,
including Entergy Corp., Luminant Generation Co. and GenOn Energy.

In the first two years, the EPA estimates that the regulation and
some other steps would have slashed sulfur dioxide emissions by 73
percent from 2005 levels, and nitrogen oxides will be cut by more than
half.

Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution from power plant
smokestacks can be carried long distances by the wind and weather. As
they drift, the pollutants react with other substances in the atmosphere
to form smog and soot, which have been linked to various illnesses,
including asthma, and have prevented many down-wind states and cities from
complying with health-based standards set by law.

Environmentalists
on Friday said they would continue to defend the regulations, which are
essential for some states to be able to meet air quality standards for
soot and smog and are far more protective than the ones proposed under
the Bush administration.

“The pollution reductions at stake are
some of the single most important clean air protections for children,
families and communities, across the eastern half of the United States,”
said Vickie Patton, the general counsel for the Environmental Defense
Fund.

But Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability
Coordinating Council, a coalition of power companies, said in a
statement Friday that the ruling was the “first step to setting it
right.”

“The underlying rule was the subject of hasty process,
poor technical support, unequal application and substantial threat to
jobs, power bills and reliability,” he said.

A number of downwind states have joined to defend the EPA rule in court. Not among them is New Jersey where Governor Chris Christie is taking a different approach to out-of-state, power-plant air pollution. Christie’s interstate air pollution decision is a puzzlement