Emerson, SEMO Economic Development Commission, Meet to Discuss Air Quality
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U.S. Representative Jo Ann Emerson was in Perryville on Thursday, August 27, 2009 to meet with leaders of the Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission to discuss Perry and Ste. Genevieve County compliance with Environmental Protection Agency clean air guidelines. According to new standards set in place by the EPA in March 2008, both counties exceeded the limits required for ground-level ozone in the atmosphere.
In order to reach attainable status, air quality monitors in place in Farrar and Bonne Terre must record an average of less than 75 parts ozone per billion over a three-year interval. Both monitors reported slightly higher averages for the previous reporting period. The Farrar monitor is currently reporting that Perry County could be just under the 75 parts per billion threshold.
Chauncy Buchheit is executive director of the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Development Commission. He says that most Perry and Ste. Genevieve County industries are already using best-available technologies to decrease the emissions of the necessary ingredients to produce ozone. The Farrar and Bonne Terre monitors are picking up ozone that has migrated into the region from big out-of-state polluters, mainly from the Gulf Coast and the Ohio River Valley, he says. “A large portion of that on the Ohio River Valley, particularly, is coming from coal-fired plants. But some comes from refineries on the Gulf Coast. That’s a big area of concern,” he says.
Air quality non-attainment status could be detrimental to the economic health of the region. This is Representative Emerson’s biggest concern. “Certainly, if a company wants to come to our area and they look at an area as being in non-attainment with EPA guidelines with regards to ozone, then they’re going to say ‘Well, it’s going to cost me too much money to come here. I’m not going to do that because I’ll be penalized for any business and any emissions that we have,’” the Representative from Missouri’s 8th District said.
David Grimes is the director of research and special projects at the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning Commission. He says, “You have to put yourself in the head of the site selector.” Grimes mentioned that site selectors start off with a list of a thousand possible sites, and they have to winnow that list down. It’s like a hiring employer going through a hundred job applications. Being in non-attainment to EPA ground-level ozone guidelines is like having a coffee stain on your resume.
“Your first thing that you want to do is not give them a reason to say no,” he cautions. “You’ve got to get them here before you can get them to say yes. If they’ve had a reason to say no before they even come to talk with you, then you never gave them a chance to talk with you.”
The Farrar and Bonne Terre air quality monitors were originally installed as control monitors. They were put there to measure what clean air should look like compared to what St. Louis monitors were picking up.
Representative Emerson feels that one of the big issues is how the EPA structures their guidelines. Currently, there is no distinction between urban and rural areas with regards to clean air attainment. “It’s very hard to write a set of rules that apply to both. And unfortunately the government, for simplicity’s sake, just does that,” Emerson says. “Hopefully we’ll have some input so that rural lawmakers will be able to bring common sense to this process.”
Ground-level ozone is not an emission in and of itself. It is formed by a chemical reaction caused by sunlight, Nitrogen Oxides, and Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs. Nitrogen Oxides come from burning fossil fuels. VOCs come from gas fumes, paints, and things like that. The Nitrogen Oxides and the VOCs are cooked by sunlight in the atmosphere, which produces the ozone.
Buchheit and Grimes are formulating a Clean Air Action Plan. The plan would focus on changing individual habits to reduce the number of VOCs and Nitrogen Oxides emitted into the atmosphere, especially when sunlight is present. Both Perry and Ste. Genevieve Counties are so tantalizingly close to dipping below the 75 parts per billion average, that individual actions could mean the difference between attainment and non-attainment, according to Buchheit. “Don’t let your car idle,” he mentions. In addition, “Fuel your tank in the afternoon or the evening rather than in the morning, because if you spill fuel in the morning that thing’s going to sit there and cook all day. Mow your grass in the evening instead of the morning.”
They also encourage the use of carpooling, battery-powered weed eaters and tools, and the use of charcoal chimneys instead of charcoal lighter fluid. And stop filling up your tank when the pump shuts off. Topping it off encourages gas leakages.
“I don’t know if we’ll make that great of a change, but very possible, very possible, yes. Because there’s very little that we can actually do when you have a lot of the ozone coming in from elsewhere,” Buchheit said.