Scott Manley: Milwaukee area should be off ozone list

Scott Manley  —  6/08/2008 9:01 am

The Environmental Protection Agency made news last week when it stated publicly that Wisconsin must establish a plan for meeting the federal ozone standard in Southeast Wisconsin. Yet one very important detail was overlooked.

The metropolitan Milwaukee area has already met the federal ozone standard, and deserves to be removed from the ozone non-attainment list.

Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, Racine and Waukesha counties met the ozone standard in 2006, and continued to meet the standard throughout 2007. Gov. Jim Doyle recognized the progress toward cleaner air, and submitted those counties for redesignation to attainment last year.

So why won't the EPA grant the regulatory relief these communities earned through reduced pollution?

Those five counties are being held hostage by a single monitor placed at the state line in Kenosha County. Worse yet, that ozone monitor doesn't even measure Wisconsin air quality -- it measures what blows across the state line from Illinois.

You may be wondering why an ozone monitor in Kenosha County sets the regulatory standard for the entire metropolitan area. It's a great question.

The Clean Air Act imposes ozone regulations on all the counties in a geographical region based on the ozone levels detected at the area's worst monitor, which is the monitor located near the state border in Kenosha County.

However, the Clean Air Act also establishes ozone non-attainment boundaries based on metropolitan areas defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. As a result, Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington and Racine counties are all lumped together as one region under the Clean Air Act.

You will notice that Kenosha County is missing from that list. Indeed, the Census Bureau places Kenosha County in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Community leaders, businesses, workers and lawmakers should be outraged that the misapplication of Clean Air Act policies is causing Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington and Racine counties to continue suffering under burdensome ozone regulations despite having met the federal air quality standard. Each and every monitor in the five-county region is meeting the standard.

The businesses in those counties have significantly reduced air pollution, and deserve to be designated as having attained the ozone standards under Clean Air Act.

It's that simple.

It's time to remove the barriers to economic expansion and job creation in those five counties by rewarding decades of hard work to reduce air emissions.

Wisconsin officials need to take a stand on this issue.

Using what for all practical purposes is an Illinois monitor to impose regulatory burdens on Wisconsin counties is no longer acceptable. These counties have suffered for too long under flawed policies that burden the entire region with expensive and unwarranted regulatory mandates.

We have made great progress over the years in lowering ozone levels, and will continue to see more success as new pollution reductions are implemented in the near future.

Our regulatory relief is long overdue.

It's time to follow the Clean Air Act and designate Kenosha County as a separate ozone non-attainment area apart from metropolitan Milwaukee.

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Scott Manley is environmental policy director for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.

Scott Manley  —  6/08/2008 9:01 am