By Lee Bergquist
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday designated six Wisconsin counties, including Brown County, for the first time ever, as violating federal standards for fine-particle pollution.
The other five counties are Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine, Dane and Columbia.
The revised standard was set after the agency reviewed thousands of scientific studies on how the tiny particles affect the lungs and heart and concluded that allowable daily limits for soot levels must fall by 46 percent.
The EPA said the new levels could produce health benefits of $9 billion to $75 billion a year nationally, but many science and environmental groups said standards should have been made even stricter.
Many business groups, however, were opposed to the reductions because they will mean more regulations and higher costs for affected companies over about the next five years.
“Certainly the non-attainment designation comes with an expensive new layer of permitting,” said Scott Manley, director of environmental policy for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby.
In the six Wisconsin counties, companies that expand or move into the area could be forced to purchase the most expensive pollution controls on the market and would have to find ways to cut soot levels.
In the Midwest, the EPA named 76 counties as not meeting the new standard for fine particles.
In Wisconsin, if the designations become a reality — there is still a period for public comment — the new standards will create different rules with different responsibilities in different counties.
Some counties, such as Dane, will violate standards for particulates but not for another pollutant known as ozone. Others, such as Ozaukee, will violate the standard for ozone but not particle pollution.
“It will certainly create a patchwork,” observed Al Shea, administrator of the division of air and waste management at the state Department of Natural Resources.
The DNR said the six counties could meet the new standards if utilities agree to reduce other pollutants as part of proposed mercury-reductions regulations now before the Republican-controlled Assembly.
The Assembly Natural Resources Committee holds a hearing on the mercury rule today. The rule aims to cut mercury levels from coal-fired power plants by 90% by 2021 if utilities agree to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, as well.
It is these other pollutants that help create soot. The tiny particles come from coal-fired power plants, cars and trucks and other sources and are 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller.
A human hair is about 70 microns.
When breathed, fine particles can eventually lead to lung disease, asthma attacks and heart problems.
Ozone, a summer phenomenon, can cause heart and lung troubles, too. But high levels of particle pollution can hit even in the winter. In December, the DNR issued an unprecedented 25-hour particle-pollution alert in metropolitan Milwaukee when emissions were so high that authorities recommended that everyone — even healthy people — cut back on strenuous outdoors activity.
DNR and Gov. Jim Doyle have said that planned reductions by utilities and industry and anticipated cuts from the mercury regulations will ratchet down emissions.
In December, Doyle asked the EPA to consider all counties in Wisconsin as being in compliance with the law.
But the EPA responded on Tuesday by designating the six counties as being in violation. In a letter to Doyle, the EPA said it could not give counties a pass, based on what they might do in the future.
Jennifer Feyerherm of the Sierra Club office in Madison agreed with the EPA action.
“The EPA is using the Clean Air Act to protect the air, thank goodness, because Wisconsin wanted to pretend that the air pollution didn’t exist,” she said.
The letter analyzed each of the six counties’ pollution picture. Racine and Waukesha counties were included in the designation because both contribute to Milwaukee’s particle emissions. Columbia County was added because a coal-fired plant there plays a role in particle pollution in Dane County. Brown County reported violations, but the EPA said surrounding counties were too small to play a role.
However, the EPA said Kenosha, Ozaukee, and Washington counties did not need to be lumped in with the others.
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