RALEIGH, N.C. – The North Carolina Legislature has redrawn rules designed to clean up a key water supply for several Piedmont cities.

The House approved by a wide margin Monday night a bill that overrules measures to clean up Jordan Lake that the state Environmental Management Commission approved last year. The bill now moves to Gov. Beverly Perdue’s desk.

The bill attempts to reduce runoff from commercial and residential development that can contribute to pollution in the lake and hurt fish and other underwater life.

The compromise between developers and environmentalists also attempts to reduce the cost of anti-pollution efforts for cities and developers.

WASHINGTON  – President Barack Obama’s new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks will save billions of barrels of oil but are expected to cost consumers an extra $1,300 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete in 2016.

Obama on Tuesday planned to announce the first-ever national emissions limits for vehicles, as well as require an overall or industry average fuel efficiency standard at 35.5 miles per gallon.

Carol Browner, the White House energy and climate director, publicly confirmed the new initiative in appearances on morning network news shows, calling it a “truly historic” occasion and saying tougher standards are “long overdue.”

The plan also would effectively end a feud between automakers and statehouses over emission standards – with the states coming out on top but the automakers getting the single national standard they’ve been seeking and more time to make the changes.

Obama’s proposed change in rules would for the first time combine pollution reduction from vehicle tailpipes with increased efficiency on the road. It would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil through 2016 and would be the environmental equivalent of taking 177 million cars off the road, said senior administration officials speaking anonymously, ahead of the announcement.

New vehicles would be 30 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by the end of the program, they said.

The plan, to be proposed in the Federal Register of pending rules and regulations, must still clear procedural hurdles at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department. Automakers expressed their support for the plan. “We’re all agreeing to work together on a national program,” said Dave
McCurdy, president and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

Administration officials said consumers were going to pay an extra $700, anyway, for mileage standards that had already been approved. The Obama plan adds another $600 to the price of a vehicle, a senior administration official said, bringing the total cost to $1,300 by 2016.

That official said the cost would be recovered through savings at the pump for consumers inside the first three years and if gas prices follow government projections. Officials also said that consumers would save money over the lifetime of the car in exchange for the upfront expense.

Under the changes, the overall fleet average would have to be 35.5 mpg by 2016, with passenger cars reaching 39 mpg and light trucks hitting 30 mpg under a system that develops standards for each vehicle class size. Manufacturers would also be required to hit individual mileage targets.

Browner, who headed the EPA during the Clinton administration, said the industry told the administration “they wanted to make cleaner cars and what they needed was the government to give them predictability and certainty so that they could make the investments toward cleaner cars.”

In a battle over emission standards, California, 13 other states and the District of Columbia have urged the federal government to let them enact more stringent standards than the federal government’s requirements. The states’ regulations would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent in new cars and trucks by 2016 – the benchmark Obama planned to unveil for vehicles built in model years 2012 and beyond.

The Obama plan gives the states essentially what they sought and more, although the buildup is slower than the states sought. In exchange, though, cash-strapped states such as California would not have to develop their own standards and enforcement plan. Instead, they can rely on federal tax dollars to monitor the environment.

The auto industry will be required to ramp up production of more fuel-efficient vehicles on a much tighter timeline than originally envisioned. It will be costly; the Transportation Department last year estimated that requiring the industry to meet 31.6 mpg by 2015 would cost nearly $47 billion.

But industry officials – many of whom are running companies on emergency taxpayer dollars – said Obama’s plan would help them because they would not face multiple emissions requirements and would have more certainty as they develop their vehicles for the next decade.

Auto executives, including General Motors Corp. CEO Fritz Henderson, and executives from Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co., Daimler AG and others planned to attend the White House event along with United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Browner was interviewed on CBS’s “The Early Show” and ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

WASHINGTON- House Democrats are outlining a plan to cut greenhouse gases by 20 percent over the next decade and 83 percent by mid-century.

But the draft proposal to be unveiled Tuesday leaves for future negotiations one of the most contentious issues: It does not say how pollution allowances would be distributed or whether they will be sold by auction or given away to polluting industries.

The so-called “discussion draft” also calls for increasing energy efficiency and requiring utilities to produce a fourth of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025.

The emission reductions mirror a proposal by President Barrack Obama.

WASHINGTON  – The Obama administration is delaying a rule issued in the final days of President George W. Bush’s presidency that would have let some industrial facilities avoid having to install pollution controls when they expand.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that the rule would be delayed 90 days so it could be re-evaluated.

Environmentalists had complained that the rule would have let power plants, factories and other industrial facilities increase emissions that cause soot and smog.

Industry groups said the rule would have enabled facilities to upgrade power plants without worrying about violating anti-pollution laws.

Existing facilities typically must apply for a permit when modifications will emit an additional 40 tons a year of a major pollutant.

The regulation the Bush administration adopted on Jan. 15 would have changed how facilities calculate how much pollution would result from their upgrades.

The delay, which pushes back the rule until May, is another sign that President Barack Obama is diverging from the ways of the Bush administration on air pollution.

Last week, the Justice Department announced it would no longer fight to uphold a Bush administration plan – favored by industry – for controlling mercury emissions from power plants.

Courts had found that the Bush plan violated the Clean Air Act. Obama’s EPA has begun crafting a new regulation to limit mercury emissions from power plants.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama ordered the government Monday to re-examine whether California and other states should be allowed to have tougher auto emission standards, a clean break from Bush administration policy.

Jumping into the seemingly never-ending national energy debate, Obama also directed his administration to get moving on new fuel-efficiency guidelines for the auto industry in time to cover 2011 model-year cars.

“For the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and commitment to change,” Obama said in his first formal event in the ornate East Room of the White House.

“It will be the policy of my administration,” he said, “to reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs.”

California and at least a dozen other states have tried to come up with tougher emission standards than those imposed by the federal government, but Obama said that “Washington stood in their way.” The president wants the Environmental Protection Agency to take a second look at a decision denying California – and the other states that want to follow its model – permission to set its own tailpipe emission standards.

More broadly, Obama sought to show he was not waiting to put his stamp on energy policy, which has both near-term implications on the sagging economy and long-range effects on pollution, climate change and national security.

“Year after year, decade after decade, we’ve chosen delay over decisive action,” Obama said. “Rigid ideology has overruled sound science. Special interests have overshadowed common sense. Rhetoric has not led to the hard work needed to achieve results – and our leaders raise their voices each time there’s a spike on gas prices, only to grow quiet when the price falls at the pump.”

The Clean Air Act gives California special authority to regulate vehicle pollution because the state began regulating such pollution before the federal government got into the act. But a federal waiver is still required; if the waiver is granted, other states can choose to adopt California’s standards or the federal ones.

In 2007 the Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency denied California’s waiver request, gaining praise from the auto industry but touching off a storm of investigations and lawsuits from Democrats and environmental groups who contended the denial was based on political instead of scientific reasons.

Obama on Monday directed the EPA to re-examine the decision. That does not yet overturn anything. But still, the states’ wanting their own power considered it a victory.

“The federal government must work with, not against, states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Obama said. He added: “The days of Washington dragging its heels are over. My administration will not deny facts; we will be guided by them.”