Lee Bergquist

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Sheboygan County has some of the dirtiest air in Wisconsin, and for years it has failed to meet federal air pollution standards for smog.

Now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to give the county a second, one-year extension to try to comply with the law and keep emissions down.

State regulators appointed by Gov. Scott Walker support the move — as do business groups.

Without the extension, more costly antipollution measures would be required for one of the most manufacturing-intensive counties in Wisconsin.

Companies with rising emissions would need to pay for new controls or buy unused pollution credits from others. Regulators might also need to impose more controls on motorists to keep air clean.

But an environmental group, Clean Wisconsin, is challenging the action because of the harmful health impacts on people who breathe polluted air on hot sunny days.

Pollutants migrate from outside state

The dispute is the latest involving eastern Wisconsin’s smog problems and how best to manage air pollution when it reaches unhealthy levels.

The added challenge for counties along Lake Michigan — including those in metropolitan Milwaukee — is that much of the dirty air isn’t homegrown but blows in from someplace else.

When smog, also called ground-level ozone, rises in areas like Sheboygan and metropolitan Milwaukee, much of it is coming from Illinois, according to a 2017 Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources report.

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How much? Eighty-five percent to 93 percent of ozone detected by air monitors in lakeshore counties comes from outside Wisconsin, the DNR said, citing data from the Lake Michigan Air Directors Consortium, which works with states on air pollution issues.

Heavy manufacturing

Sheboygan County attracts much of the attention because it has the highest concentrations and boasts the biggest proportion of manufacturing jobs in the state, excluding the rural counties of Trempealeau and Price.

Nearly 35 percent of the county’s workforce, or 60,772 people, worked in the manufacturing sector in 2017, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Sheboygan County continues to be punished for pollution generated elsewhere that flows into the county," said Lucas Vebber, an attorney for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

But environmental groups and public health advocates have countered that, regardless, people are breathing unhealthy air on high ozone days.

Susan Hedman, an attorney with Clean Wisconsin, said her organization is challenging the EPA’s preliminary decision that gives Sheboygan County an extension to meet the 2008 federal ozone standards, in part, because even tougher standards approved in 2015 are being implemented.

Hedman says that instead of delay, the EPA should be “accelerating” efforts to push the county into compliance.

“If you can’t comply with the 2008 standard — and aren’t on a trajectory to do that — it’s really going to be difficult to comply with the 2015 ozone standard,” said Hedman, who was EPA’s regional administrator for the Midwest from 2010 to 2016.

The environmental group says the delay exposes the public to another year of potentially unhealthy air.

Earlier this year, it filed a lawsuit against the EPA after the agency reversed course and agreed with Wisconsin officials — who cited the role of out-of-state pollution sources — and sharply narrowed areas of eastern Wisconsin that would violate the tougher new standard.

Smog is created when a mix of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds from power plants, factories and motor vehicles react with sunlight.

On high-ozone days, it can constrict the muscles in people’s airways and make it difficult to breathe. This especially affects people with respiratory ailments and children whose lungs are still developing. But it’s also a problem for people exercising and those who work outdoors.

Ozone hot spot

Between 2015 to 2017, the county’s air monitor at Kohler-Andrae State Park had a three-year average ozone count of 80 parts per billion — the highest in the state, according to DNR data.

That’s above the 2008 standard of 75 parts per billion and the 2015 standard of 70 parts per billion, which is in the process of being implemented.

Thanks to pollution controls and cleaner burning automobiles, air quality has improved over the past two decades. But federal standards for how much ozone is safe are getting stricter.

When the EPA, under the Obama administration, lowered the limit to 70 parts per billion, officials said they analyzed nearly 2,300 health studies to justify their actions, including more than 1,000 studies since the last review was conducted in 2008.

In its comments to the EPA, Clean Wisconsin criticized the DNR for “arbitrarily ignoring” data from this year showing poor air quality in the county. Data from late May to mid-July showed that Kohler-Andrae’s air monitor showed daily readings of 81, 83, 85 and 94 parts per billion.

Had those figures been added, the EPA would not have been able to give the county an extension and more controls would have been imposed on the county, according to federal regulations.

Hedman was also critical of the DNR for trying to remove Kohler-Andrae’s air monitor in its 2019 statewide monitoring plan and relying instead on a second monitor inland that consistently has lower readings and isn’t as severely affected by summer air conditions.

“EPA and the DNR can’t turn a blind eye to data that show that there is a clear risk to public health,” Hedman said.

On that point, the EPA agrees. Federal requirements don’t allow states to get rid of air monitors that measure higher pollution levels, although Vebber of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty said the other monitor is a more accurate reflection of air conditions in the county.

In an email, DNR air management staff said the agency initially eliminated the air monitor in the state park in future planning because of a 2017 Wisconsin law that ordered the DNR to do so.

As for ignoring this year’s high ozone levels, DNR said it couldn’t use the data because it had not yet gone through a lengthy process of analysis.

That contention was supported by Douglas Aburano, an EPA air quality administrator in Chicago, when contacted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.