FAIRBANKS — Federal environmental regulators are encouraged that Fairbanks voters are debating air quality issues but aren’t backing off demands for mandatory limits to reduce smoke emissions, a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said this week.

Fairbanks North Star Borough voters’ rejected Proposition 2, known as the Healthy Air Protection Act, in the Oct. 4 election. The proposition would have banned wood-fired hydronic heaters and coal appliances in the borough’s core populated area and created fines for violating smoke standards.

The EPA has given Alaska until 2014 to get the Fairbanks and North Pole metro area, known as the non-attainment area, to meet federal air quality standards. But if the state can’t produce a viable plan because of political opposition, it could lose millions in federal highway funding and could be the target of strict federal regulations.

Although the 20 percent margin by which voters rejected Proposition 2 sends a pretty firm message,the discussion sparked by the measure was worthwhile, said Marianne Holsman, the EPA's regional spokeswoman in Seattle.

“We are encouraged that Proposition 2 helped raise awareness of this issue and that the citizens of Fairbanks are engaging in the debate about how to improve air quality,” Holsman said.

But that doesn’t mean the EPA is about to give the state extra slack when it comes to air quality.

According to EPA rules, that plan will need to include enforceable regulations, such as emissions standards and fines for polluters.

“We know that locally based solutions will ultimately be the most successful and sustainable in the long run,” she said. “In our experience, mandatory and enforceable control measures are part of the package of actions needed for communities to attain the fine particulate air quality standard.”

That leaves borough and state leaders with a call for action; they’ll need to figure out some form of regulations before late next year or else risk losing millions in federal highway funds if the EPA rejects the plan. But that’s difficult for the borough, because a 2010 voter-passed initiative bars the borough from banning or prohibiting the use of heating devices and from fining residents for doing so, until at least October 2012.

The state could impose its own regulations, but it doesn’t have any power beyond taking polluters to court, an expensive and slow process.

One option for the Borough Assembly would be to pass its own set of regulations that wouldn’t go into effect until after the 2010 rules run out. If the assembly was to go down such a route — which is still unclear — it would have the advantage of bringing more voices to the discussion to compromise on a palatable set of regulations, said Borough Mayor Luke Hopkins.

“If that were to happen that would allow a lot of discussion with the community,” he said. “The assembly will have to make a decision, do they want to have a say in what measures will be in our community or are they going to let the state deal with it.”

Moving ahead, Hopkins said the administration has scheduled a handful of informational meetings with the assembly to outline the EPA’s rules and the borough’s options. The first of such meetings is scheduled for the Nov. 3 work session.

Contact staff writer Matt Buxton at 459-7544.