Subpar Area Air Expected for Years: Sierra Club, Expert Disagree With Doyle

By Lee Bergquist, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Mar. 21–Metropolitan Milwaukee residents will breathe air that is sootier than federal health standards for years to come, despite Gov. Jim Doyle’s claims that the entire state will meet tougher new air-quality standards, according to a veteran state air specialist and the Sierra Club.

In December, Doyle asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to consider that all Wisconsin counties will be in compliance for soot, or particle pollution, by a federal 2014 deadline.

In contrast, the governors of Illinois, Indiana and Michigan acknowledged that some of their counties would be out of compliance by that deadline. That noncompliance would require the states to hold public hearings and develop plans to reduce air pollution. That could mean more regulations — and more costs — for large companies in the regions, or those thinking of moving or expanding there.

In telling federal officials that Wisconsin will make it, Doyle is trying to avoid those costs.

At the time of Doyle’s request, Milwaukee, Waukesha and Brown counties had particle pollution that exceeded the federal standard, according to air monitoring data from 2004 to 2006.

More recent data from 2007 shows that Waukesha dropped off the list, but Dane County joined Milwaukee and Brown counties in exceeding the standard.

Although particle pollution has declined in Wisconsin in recent years, the standards are getting tougher. The EPA has cut the allowable amount of particulates 46% because scientists have found stronger links between the microscopic particles and cases of aggravated asthma, chronic bronchitis, reduced lung function, irregular heartbeat, heart attacks and premature death.

Overruling DNR staff

Doyle’s request to the EPA was recommended by top Department of Natural Resources officials who had overruled their own staff.

Employees in the DNR air management unit had concluded that some counties, including Milwaukee, wouldn’t meet new requirements for soot until at least four years after the 2014 deadline, said Larry Bruss, chief of regional pollutants and mobile sources at the DNR.

Bruce Nilles, an attorney for the Sierra Club, was critical of Doyle and top DNR officials for not supporting the staff’s draft report.

The report suggested that counties in metropolitan Milwaukee be considered out of compliance, as well as counties around Green Bay and potentially Dodge, Dane, Rock and Columbia counties.

“The DNR ignored monitoring data and said, ‘Let’s get by on a hope and prayer,’ ” Nilles said. “What’s really startling is that the DNR is charged with making sure that people comply with the law — and they are acting as if they are above the law.”

Bruss, a 30-year veteran of the DNR, expressed misgivings that his agency failed to inform the Legislature and the public about the status of the counties.

He said his staff’s report was written not as a final recommendation but as a draft, with the assumption that there would be public comment and input from the Legislature.

“Well, none of that happened,” Bruss said.

Had Wisconsin, like other Midwestern states, asked the EPA to designate problem counties as being in “non-attainment,” state law would have required public hearings and a 60-day advance notice to the Legislature.

E-mails obtained by the Sierra Club and provided to the Journal Sentinel show that in the months before Doyle made his request, there was interest from the Department of Transportation and a Dane County consortium of government and business officials, anxious to learn what the DNR would do.

The agency did not provide the officials with details, e-mails show.

“What the DNR is saying is that on a strictly legal basis, they can avoid notification,” said Rep. Spencer Black (D-Madison), a member of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. “But it is also a major policy decision that was a matter of great concern to many people.”

Allen Shea, director of the DNR bureau of air and waste, said he couldn’t release details of the report because it was a draft report and had not been finalized.

Despite the concerns of environmentalists, Shea said, the state was on the right path without getting bogged down in writing a plan to satisfy the EPA.

When he and another DNR official reviewed his department’s report, they saw that more than a dozen counties might be out of compliance for particle pollution. “It didn’t make any sense to us,” Shea said.

He and Kevin Kessler, director of the bureau of air management, decided to take a different tack.

They believe existing air regulations and Doyle’s proposed rule to cut mercury pollution 90% will spur faster compliance.

‘Outmoded’ template

The rule that Doyle touted Tuesday in Milwaukee includes a feature that allows utilities to delay cuts in mercury emissions if they also reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. Both compounds are contributors to particle pollution.

Shea said this meant Wisconsin would be cutting emissions this year, rather than burning up time trying to satisfy the EPA and making cuts three years from now.

Shea didn’t dispute the quality of his staff’s work. But he said the staff was working with the EPA template for fighting pollution, which he called “outmoded and outdated.”

Cheryl Newton, acting director of air and radiation for the EPA regional office in Chicago, said the agency was required to follow provisions of the Clean Air Act.

In addition to reliance on existing regulations, Shea said, EPA modeling shows Wisconsin will come into compliance.

But Bruss said Shea was relying on projections that used older data and weren’t as accurate as the model used by the Lake Michigan Air Directors Consortium, an organization of air regulators from Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

Particle pollution is produced from burning coal, oil and diesel fuel. Other contributors are fireplaces and outdoor fires.

Power plants and vehicles are big sources of particle pollution, but officials said there was little that could be done at present to clean up emissions from cars without a national policy.

In Wisconsin, particle pollution is often a winter phenomenon, when weather conditions and wind patterns trap microscopic particles in the air.

State officials issued numerous warnings for particle pollution over the winter.

For the first time, Wisconsin’s air-quality index rose to “red” for a 24-hour period on Dec. 20 and 21.

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