Cooper Still Fighting

We got a little good news over the Thanksgiving holiday: NC Attorney General Roy Cooper is pushing ahead with his work to stop air pollution from blowing into North Carolina.  From the Charlotte Observer:

North Carolina's attorney general is pressing forward with a lawsuit that accuses the nation's largest federal utility of causing a "public nuisance" by failing to reduce pollution from its coal-fired power plants.

Attorney General Roy Cooper said his team was identifying experts to bolster the state's case against the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The lawsuit claims TVA has not taken enough steps to reduce the sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and soot that have wafted into North Carolina from 11 coal-burning plants in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama.

"We're going to have experts to show how visibility in the mountains will significantly improve, how many deaths will be prevented and how many hospital admissions will be reduced when TVA takes steps to cut down on its pollution," Cooper told the Asheville Citizen-Times in an interview published Thursday.

The Raleigh News and Observer praises Cooper and calls TVA's resistance and hard-nosed attitude "unfortunate".  Hopefully, we're getting close to a solution, but the situation is still a sad one:

The North Carolina mountains were once a healing mecca for people from pollution-choked cities. Doctors prescribed high country living as a way to regain healthy lungs. Now, sadly, its is the mountains themselves that need healing.