KHI NEWS SERVICE
TOPEKA, Aug. 1
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has formally approved plans to reduce ozone-forming emissions in the Kansas City area.
Kansas and Missouri officials submitted their plans to the EPA in May. Ozone limits are set by the EPA and are evaluated on a three-year cycle, said Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokesman Joe Blubaugh. After two years of high levels, officials had predicted that this year would push the two states over the legal limit.
“The margin for error was pretty thin,”
Blubaugh said.
In June, one of the eight monitoring stations in the metro area, which includes Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas and Jackson, Clary and Platte counties in Missouri, recorded an ozone level that exceeded the EPA”s standards over an eight-hour period.
Communities that fail to address the ozone issue could be subject to stricter regulatory rules to control emissions.
The EPA”s approval allows KDHE to draft regulations to limit power plant emissions and engine idling of commercial diesel vehicles in the Kansas City metro area, Blubaugh said. The regulations will be subject to public review and comment.
“We are greatly pleased to learn that these plans have been given the go-ahead by the EPA,” KDHE Secretary Roderick L. Bremby, said in a prepared statement.
Ground-level ozone, or smog, is caused when nitrogen oxides
produced by power plants, factories and vehicles
mix with volatile organic compounds and cook in the heat and humidity. Approximately one-third of the emissions causing the region”s pollution problem are produced by cars and trucks.
Ozone is unhealthy to breathe and can damage the lining of the lungs and reduce the body”s ability to ward off respiratory infections.