OTTAWA COUNTY, Mich. - (GRBJ) The Sierra Club filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency covering the omission of Ottawa County from the EPA’s list of areas found to be in “nonattainment” of health-based ozone standards.
Ottawa County is one of several places across the U.S. cited in the lawsuit, filed Aug. 3 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Elena Saxonhouse is a senior attorney for the Sierra Club and member of the team that filed the suit. She said each time the EPA strengthens its air quality standards, it is obligated to review all of its air quality monitors to check for ozone precursors — nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
“In 2015, the EPA revised the standard from 75 parts per billion down to 70 (ppb) — so they made it more stringent — which triggered the EPA’s obligation to take a look at which monitors across the country violate the EPA standard,” Saxonhouse said. Those that did were marked as “nonattaining” in a report that came out earlier this year.
A nonattainment designation requires state legislators to address the pollution factors to bring air quality to federal standards by 2021.
In the report, the EPA designated a seven-county area in southeast Michigan as being in nonattainment, as well as portions of Muskegon, Allegan and Berrien counties, which ranked at 74, 73 and 73 ppb for ozone precursors, respectively.
But it left out Ottawa County, which, according to the Sierra Club, ranks seventh among all Michigan counties for emissions of ozone precursors. Ottawa County’s ozone precursor levels currently are at 68 ppb. The group said the county, along with many areas in the U.S., should be designated nonattaining because it contributes to pollution in surrounding counties.
Ottawa County also recently received an “F” grade for air quality from the American Lung Association, which uses publicly available data from the EPA ozone monitors to determine the letter grades.
Ozone in the stratosphere is beneficial because it blocks the sun’s harmful rays, but it becomes smog in the troposphere — at ground level — when it mixes with sunlight, causing lung, heart and other health problems.
NOx and VOCs are “created by energy generation: cars and trucks, tailpipes and smokestacks,” Saxonhouse said, and those emissions destroy the protective upper ozone and pollute the troposphere.
The Sierra Club points to the coal-fired smokestacks at Consumers Energy’s J.H. Campbell Generating Complex in West Olive as a major source of pollution. In 2017, the EPA ranked it as the fourth-highest generator of NOx emissions among power plants in the state of Michigan and the top source in West Michigan.
To read the entire story, pick up the Grand Rapids Business Journal or visit their website.
►Make it easy to keep up to date with more stories like this. Download the WZZM 13 app now.
Have a news tip? Email news@wzzm13.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter.
