• BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -- Federal regulators have approved a new measure meant to help turn Montana's Big Sky Country into Clear Sky Country by forcing industrial plants to cut pollutants that make hazy skies over national parks and wilderness areas.
• The Environmental Protection Agency rule has been criticized by industry as too costly and by conservationists and other federal agencies as not tough enough.
• The goal is to restore visibility to natural conditions in national parks and wilderness areas from Idaho to North Dakota. The official target date is 2064, but EPA officials acknowledge it would take several centuries for some parks and wildernesses under the new rule.
• "This is the first step basically," EPA regional air program director Carl Daly said Thursday.
• To get there, the agency detailed $85 million in upgrades needed within five years at the Colstrip coal power plant in southeastern Montana, the Ash Grove cement plant near Montana City and the Holcim cement plant near Three Forks.
• Including operating expenses over the next 20 years, the total costs to the three plants would top $270 million, EPA officials said Thursday. An alternative proposal that was favored by conservation groups but rejected by the EPA would have cost Colstrip an additional more than $120 million.
• The upgrades would reduce industrial emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The two pollutants react with the atmosphere and cause the air to appear hazy above some of the nation's prized public lands, including Yellowstone, Glacier and Theodore Roosevelt national parks.
• In the western U.S., haze is blamed for reducing visibility by half versus natural conditions.
• But conservationists complain the upgrades being required in Montana don't do nearly enough. They point out that it would take hundreds of years for some sites to reach the EPA goal.
• "EPA is forfeiting an enormous opportunity here," said Jeremy Nichols with WildEarth Guardians. "The real benchmark is, are we doing everything reasonable to achieve clean air? EPA didn't achieve that goal."
• The National Park Service said EPA regulators overestimated the potential costs of more advanced pollution controls that could have further cut emissions. The U.S.

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