From a grassy hilltop in western Maryland, a high-tech spying operation tracks the source of pollution and ozone coming into the state. State regulators use such automated air-monitoring stations to distinguish if pollutants are coming from cars or power plants. Combining the measurements with federal data, Maryland has analyzed the emissions of every coal-fired power plant east of the Mississippi River and identified 36 in five states as top contributors to Maryland’s smog-producing ozone. “We are literally in a position where we can’t control ozone in our own state,” said Tad Aburn, director of Maryland’s Air & Radiation Administration. “The only thing we can do is try to force upwind states to reduce emissions.” The Frostburg lab, set amid dairy farms and wind turbines,is helping to bolster Maryland’s argument in a multistate legal battle that coal-fired power plants in other states are to blame for ozone problems in […]