By KARL BROOKS

EPA Region 7

2011 has been a big year for cleaner air in the Midwest, because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken several long-overdue steps.

In October, the EPA finalized the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, a Clean Air Act standard designed to prevent pollution from power plants in one state from crossing borders and harming health and air quality in downwind states. The result will protect hundreds of millions of Americans, providing up to $280 billion in benefits by preventing tens of thousands of premature deaths, asthma and heart attacks, and millions of lost days of school or work due to illness.

This December, EPA will put in place Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, a second important effort to protect Midwesterners and all Americans from toxic air pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases from power plant smokestacks. While mercury is a neurotoxin that especially hurts women of childbearing age, unborn babies and young children, the other toxic metals can cause cancer.

Taken together, MATS and the Cross-State Rule launch the next phase in the Clean Air Act's 40-year record of creating a healthier, more prosperous nation.

These changes also will boost our economy. When the EPA rolls out the mercury rule in December, it will end more than two decades of delay and uncertainty utilities have faced since Congress directed the agency to set standards reducing toxic air emissions. Today, 44 percent of coal-powered plants don't use modern pollution control technology.

The EPA's rules will level the playing field for plants that have already installed or are planning to invest in air pollution controls to meet the updated clean air safeguards, thus closing a competitive gap and strengthening the market for cleaner electricity production.

EPA's analysis shows that new jobs will be created as more power plants install modern pollution-control equipment. That technology -- often designed and produced by American companies -- will need to be installed, operated and maintained by American builders, workers and engineers. The EPA estimates that the power plant mercury and toxics standards will support 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term utility jobs.

Beginning in 2012, the EPA will expand the Cross State Rule's proven air-quality standards to Kansas and help our downwind neighbors better control pollution emitted by power companies in our area.

Farther east, utilities have been working toward the emission reductions goals envisioned in the rule by installing pollution-control equipment to meet previous market regulatory programs. Those efforts proved the technology and market do work.

Utilities serving more than 2 million Kansans have sued to block the EPA's Cross-State rule. The utilities asked the EPA to retract our new rules before Jan. 1. If not, the power companies have threatened brownouts, rolling blackouts and targeted service interruptions to big industries.

Kansans also should know that in the EPA's 40-year history, there have been no instances in which the Clean Air Act has contributed to electric grid reliability problems, and should any arise, the Clean Air Act gives us the tools to address them on a case-by-case basis.

EPA's analysis and studies by other utility groups have indicated that it will be largely the oldest, dirtiest plans that shut down because they would no longer make economic sense to continue operations. Our analysis shows there is adequate power-generating capacity remaining.

For more than 40 years, the Clean Air Act's common-sense pollution controls have made our families healthier by promoting economic competition and innovation. With two important updates to the Clean Air Act in 2011, we are working to write the next chapter in that history of success.

By doing that, the EPA's clean air work helps meet this generation's responsibility to leave our kids a world as healthy and full of opportunity as the one we inherited from our parents.

Karl Brooks is administrator for the U.S. EPA's Region 7 which includes Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and nine tribal nations.