“A lot of local governments were just trying to dodge the bullet,” said Molly Diggins, state director of the N.C. Sierra Club, about meeting the EPA rules. “They hoped conformity would go away.”

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There’s some recent converage in the Charlotte paper about the Queen City and ozone, mainly on the EPA’s ozone rules and how Charlotte has massaged its planning numbers to get federal road monies.

From a recent Charlotte editorial on ozone non-attainment:

Why should anyone take seriously the Environmental Protection Agency’s ozone rules if the rules let cities such as Charlotte use questionable projections in order to keep federal road money flowing?

As the Observer’s Steve Harrison reported Wednesday, local transportation planners, in following the complex EPA rules about transportation and emissions modeling, have over the years included projections that look just plain silly.