Foxconn industrial operations would represent a major new source of air pollution in region

Plans by Foxconn Technology Group for a massive manufacturing complex in Racine County would represent a major new source of air pollution in an area already struggling with summer smog problems.

Emissions from the company’s operations in Mount Pleasant would rank among the highest in southeastern Wisconsin for pollutants that create smog, also known as ozone pollution, state documents show.

Smog poses a health threat, especially for the elderly, children and people who suffer from respiratory problems like asthma. But it can also lead to reduced lung function for people working and exercising outdoors, and environmental groups are concerned about Foxconn's impact on air quality.

Two of Foxconn's most significant air pollutants would be volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and nitrogen oxides, or NOx, according to company documents filed with the state Department of Natural Resources.

The emissions are produced during the manufacturing of super-high-resolution panels for medical imaging, consumer electronics and other uses. The $10 billion plant — a project on no one’s radar here until a year ago — could employ up to 13,000 people and represents the most significant economic development in Wisconsin in decades.

Together, VOCs and NOx emissions would have ranked fourth-highest in southeastern Wisconsin if the company had been operating in 2016, according to DNR figures.

The only higher sources would have been a trio of coal-fired power plants in Oak Creek, Pleasant Prairie and Sheboygan.

Measuring VOCs alone, Foxconn would have had the highest emissions in the region, DNR figures show.

Tracey Holloway, an air emissions expert and professor of atmospheric and ocean science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said federal laws dating back to the 1970s have led to cleaner air, but the regulations have also been marked by a tug of war between competing interests.

Foxconn, she said, represents a significant base of employment but also a significant source of air pollution.

“If in southeastern Wisconsin, if you have health insurance because of a job, or buy medicine, that is a health benefit," she said. "But on the other hand, there is no question that higher levels of ozone are associated with more kids going to the ER with asthma attacks.

“There are different kinds of benefits and they don’t always point in the same direction.”

In summer, as concentrations of VOCs and NOx rise, they interact with heat and light to form ground-level ozone. The pollutants come from factories, power plants and exhaust pipes of cars and trucks.

In December, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency made a preliminary decision that much of southeastern Wisconsin, including Racine County, violated tougher new ozone regulations approved during the Obama administration.

That could mean constraints on new or expanding industries by requiring them to install top-performing pollution controls regardless of cost — or to buy emissions credits from another company that previously made reductions. The aim of buying credits is to lower the overall impact on ozone.

Clean Wisconsin, an environmental group, thinks the tougher standards should apply to the region and wants to see net reductions in emissions that create ozone.

“We are not opposed to industrial development,” said Tyson Cook, who tracks energy, air and science issues for Clean Wisconsin. “We are not opposed to Foxconn. But the Clean Air Act was set up to deal with major sources coming into an area with bad air.”

RELATED: Wisconsin wants break from Trump administration on ozone rules in advance of Foxconn development

State seeks relief from limits

Republican Gov. Scott Walker — who wooed Foxconn to Wisconsin with the help of a state and local incentive package of $4 billion — has asked the Trump administration, which has been bullish on the Foxconn project, to set aside the tougher limits, arguing the region gets much of its ozone from neighboring Illinois.

The 2015 ozone rules were advanced under President Barack Obama after a five-year scientific review but have been attacked by business groups as costly and challenged in the courts by some states, including Wisconsin.

As part of Walker’s request to the EPA, the DNR has also filed extensive comments showing the meteorology of the Lake Michigan corridor creates wind patterns that blow pollution north on ozone days.

“This is not just a Wisconsin problem, but we can’t blame it all on Illinois, either,” Holloway said.

Regardless of the outcome, the DNR doesn’t believe Foxconn and Racine County would be subject to stricter limits under the new law, according to Gail Good, director of air management for the agency.

Good said this is because the county is in compliance with existing limits on ozone and the agency expects to complete its work on Foxconn before the new regulations take effect later this year.

As for Foxconn’s permits, “we are reviewing the applications as we would review any other air permit,” Good said.

The state’s air management staff also said last week that despite the immensity of the project, the factory’s impact would increase VOCs and NOx by about 4% in Racine County, which it says is manageable.

Also, in reviewing Foxconn’s permits, the DNR says it would require more emissions cuts than the company is proposing.

The DNR has made a preliminary determination to approve four Foxconn air pollution control permits but is taking public comments and a final decision is not expected until later in April, the agency said, to meet company deadlines.

The DNR will hold a public hearing Tuesday in Sturtevant starting at 6 p.m.

A Foxconn executive told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week the Taiwan-based company plans to break ground in the next 60 days and will start operations in the second half of next year.

The air permits provide an early glimpse at Foxconn’s manufacturing process and describe how machines drip liquid crystals on glass plates and layer the crystals with circuits and other materials over other plates. Chemicals and water are used at multiple steps to wash and coat the display panels.

Records show Foxconn will emit hundreds of tons of carbon monoxide, particulates, sulfur dioxide, various hazardous air pollutants, as well as VOCs and NOx, each year.

COMPLETE COVERAGE: Foxconn in Wisconsin

In a statement, Foxconn said that its engineers and consultants are working to ensure that the facilities will comply with all regulations.

"As part of that process, we have filed a number of air permit applications that reaffirm our commitment to use the best-available technology to control air emissions and minimize any potential negative impacts of air emissions from our facilities on ambient air quality standards," the company said.

But clean-air advocates are wary of the plant’s impact on air quality, especially if the EPA says Racine and southeastern Wisconsin meets the new ozone standards.

“We have serious concerns about the impact of adding a new major source of pollution to an area where air quality is already bad,” said Cook, of Clean Wisconsin.

By one measure, emissions in Racine County are already in violation of the new federal ozone standard, which the EPA expects to finalize by April 30.

If regulators measured air quality between 2015 and 2017, Racine County would be in violation.

In those years, an air monitor in the county measured 74 parts per billion — higher than the upper limit in the new ozone rules of 70 parts per billion.

The DNR says it is using figures from 2014 to 2016, as required by law. Those figures show a better outcome, the agency says.

Another concern of environmental groups is that neither Foxconn nor a partner has submitted an air permit to build a separate facility, a glass manufacturing plant — an essential piece in the enterprise.

Other large glass manufacturing plants in Wisconsin produce high levels of NOx emissions, DNR figures show.

In effect, not having any information about glass manufacturing is short-changing the true impact that Foxconn and its operations will have on future air quality, Clean Wisconsin's Cook said.

“Clearly, there are cumulative air impacts that we don’t know about … the public is not getting a holistic picture of what’s happening,” Cook said.