NASHUA – About 50 people especially concerned with the air we breathe gathered at City Hall auditorium Wednesday afternoon to talk to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency in New England.

Curt Spalding, administrator for the EPA’s Region I, which includes New England, was joined by a researcher from the Biodiversity Research Institute in Gorham, Maine, Madeline Turnquist, to talk about the EPA’s new push to enforce old rules limiting the emissions of things like mercury, nitrogen oxides, suffer oxides and more.

The panel was put together by the Clean Air Defense Campaign, a collection of environmental groups including the New Hampshire Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Wildlife Federation.

Spalding spent most of his time during the discussion talking about and answering questions about the EPA’s implementation of Bush administration-era emissions rules. Partisanship and legal battles followed the original creation of the regulations until fairly recently and opponents to the new standards argue the agency is overreaching its authority and will negatively affect the economy by costing major power plants millions.

A lot of what Spalding talked about doesn’t apply to many New England states, including New Hampshire, because of stiffer state laws and rules, including the one that required PSNH to install a scrubber costing hundreds of millions of dollars at the Merrimack Station coal plant in Bow.

“Power plants are still a huge part of the problem in the country,” Spalding said. “When it comes to big stacks, New England has moved ahead.”

He also mentioned local efforts, such as a project in Nashua to install a pumping station for compressed natural gas at the public works garage to replace diesel fuel in part of the city’s solid waste fleet. That station should be operational in September, according to Mayor Donnalee Lozeau, and be open to the public.

While the new rules might not have a huge impact on New England power plants, they will farther west, and those plants impact New England because pollutants emitted from stacks in Ohio, Texas and elsewhere travel to New Hampshire in the air, dumping mercury and more in New England’s soils and waterways, Turnquist said.

The new EPA rules also include cross-state air pollution guidelines that have been lauded by many officials here.

The panel discussion, moderated by Telegraph science writer David Brooks, was meant to stay away from the politics of the new rules, though it strayed that way a few times.

Spalding said while politics is a fact of life in his work, he tries to focus on improving quality of life and health for citizens.

“This is not in my mind a partisan conversation,” he said. “What we’re about is law and health and better, strong communities. This is very personal, very emotional. This isn’t just a number. It’s real stuff.”

Joseph G. Cote can be reached at 594-6415, jcote@nashuatelegraph.com; also check out Joseph Cote (@Telegraph_JCote) on Twitter.

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