The government of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien recently outlined a new long-term political agenda. It includes a proposal for major changes to transportation that would affect traffic bottlenecks at crossing points like the Ambassador Bridge. The Bridge is the biggest trading corridor between Canada and the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports:
Transcript
The government of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien recently outlined a new long-
term political agenda. It includes a proposal for major changes to transportation that
would affect traffic bottlenecks at crossing points like the Ambassador Bridge. The
Bridge is the biggest trading corridor between Canada and the U.S. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports:
Prime Minister Jean Chretien calls it part of his Kyoto plan, which is intended to reduce
traffic congestion on the main highway link along the north shore of Lake Ontario all the
way to the U.S. border for almost 24 hours a day that highway looks more like a moving
warehouse as goods travel by truck north and south of the border.
But the emissions from thousands of trucks each day are creating smog from Toronto to
Buffalo to Detroit.
Chretien’s plan is to shift more truck traffic to rail and water.
Ken Ogilvie of the environmental organization, Pollution Probe, says it’s a positive step
but it needs more government incentives similar to those in the U.S.
“What the United States is ahead of us on and should and could do a lot more is on the
policy side of tying some of this funding to make sure there is improved rail and transit
systems.”
Ogilvie says further study would be needed to determine whether the plan would simply
shift environmental problems to the Great Lakes and to rail infrastructure on both sides of
the border.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk in Toronto.
The EPA is planning to regulate smoke
from diesel engines in farm and construction equipment. Photo courtesy of NESCAUM.
You see them every time you pass a construction site: big machines belching thick diesel smoke. The smoke isn’t just annoying. It causes major health and environmental problems. Now, after years of dealing with other issues, the EPA is taking on this major source of uncontrolled pollution: emissions from farm and construction equipment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert looks at the challenges the EPA faces in this far-reaching regulatory effort:
Transcript
You see them every time you pass a construction site. Big machines belching thick diesel smoke. The smoke isn’t just annoying. It causes major health and environmental problems. Now, after years of dealing with other issues, the EPA is taking on this major source of uncontrolled pollution: emissions from farm and construction equipment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert looks at the challenges EPA faces in this far-reaching regulatory effort.
Emissions from diesel engines create problems for both the environment and people’s health. Diesels release nitrogen oxides, which are a factor in acid rain and smog. They also spew very fine particulates that can lodge deep in the lung when inhaled. And that causes respiratory problems.
Controlling these emissions is no easy task. That’s because most diesel engines still burn fuel containing high amounts of sulfur. The sulfur clogs up existing pollution control devices. And that makes it a lot tougher to come up with ways to reduce emissions. But Christopher Grundler, deputy director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality in Ann Arbor, Michigan, says its an important challenge.
“In the year 2007 we estimate that off road or non-road emissions will make up over 40% of the air pollution from mobile sources or transportation sources, so it’s a big deal.”
In tackling air pollution, EPA’s first job was to clean up gasoline car emissions. Now its moving onto diesels. The agency’s first challenge came when they issued a rule for highway trucks last year. That plan drops sulfur content in diesel fuel from 500 parts per million to 15 parts per million. It also reduces overall diesel emissions by 90% by the year 2007. The EPA now wants to use this rule as a model for farm and construction equipment as well. But the agency is likely to face opposition from refiners, who are fighting the on road rule. Jim Williams is with the American Petroleum Institute.
“We feel that the ability of the refining industry to make sufficient volumes of 15 ppm in the timeframe that EPA wants us to is highly questionable, whether we can do that. We’ve done some studies that show there will be supply shortfalls with the 15-ppm limit.”
Williams is pushing to phase in the requirement over a longer period. He says that would give refiners more time to produce the necessary quantities of low sulfur fuel. Until then, refiners also want to continue providing high sulfur fuel.
But Engine Manufacturers don’t like that idea. They’ve agreed to support tough standards only if the switchover to low sulfur fuel happens quickly. Jed Mandel runs the Engine Manufacturers Association. He’s worried that if cheaper, low sulfur fuel remains abundant; users could continue relying on the dirtier fuel.
“If there are dual fuels available — if there’s cleaner fuel on the marketplace for some time, as well as higher sulfur dirtier fuel, and there’s a price differential in that fuel, there will be a disincentive for users to buy the cleanest engines.”
Mandel says that could cause a delay in purchasing these engines for several years.
Like Mandel, Jason Grumet, executive director of the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, also wants tight standards. Northeast states, plagued with acid rain and smog caused largely by these diesels, are pushing the EPA to develop the tightest standards possible to meet clean air goals and also to better protect equipment operators.
“The particles from diesel emissions can lodge very deep within the human lung and we know that these particles are carcinogens, so for folks who work with construction equipment every day or on construction sites, for people who farm or plow fields for several hours a day, we think that the emissions of diesel pollutants cause a very substantial and real threat to their health.”
(sound of tractor)
Herb Smith isn’t worried about his health. Smith hops off his tractor and stands on the land that his family has farmed in Ida Township, Michigan since 1865. Despite years of inhaling diesel fumes, Smith said he’s in perfect physical condition. Though he supports regulations to control diesel emissions, he’s worried that the EPA will place undue hardship on farmers.
“I am concerned about fuel costs because our margin in farming is very slim and anything we add to fuel costs, we have to absorb it.”
Smith fears that some of the smaller farmers may not be able to bear higher fuel and engine costs and could go out of business.
Despite the many different viewpoints on the issue, EPA’s Grundler is confident that his agency can develop a rule that will bring tremendous public health benefits at a reasonable cost.
“We’ve shown we can do it for cars and SUVs. We’ve shown it can be done for heavy duty on highway engines. I’m absolutely certain it can be done for these sorts of engines as well.”
The agency expects to issue a technical report outlining emission control options by the end of the year. A proposal is due by the middle of next year. For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Halpert.
Trading credits for air pollution reduction just went online. The EPA has set up its emissions trading system on the Internet. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Trading credits for air pollution reduction just went on-line. The EPA has set up its emissions trading system on the Internet. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.
The EPA’s 20-billion dollar emissions trading market has been around for awhile. It allows companies that reduce pollution below mandated levels to sell the remainder of their allowances to other companies that have not met mandated reductions. But trading has been paperwork intensive. Forms have had to be sent into the EPA for processing, delaying the trade by days. Now the EPA has harnessed the Internet, allowing the more than two thousand companies enrolled to trade online. Brian McLean is the Director of the EPA’s Clean Air Markets Division.
“It speeds up the trading process which therefore saves on the cost of buying and selling and moving these allowances and the more we can take advantage of lower cost emission reductions.”
The EPA says the trading system helps companies meet the goal set by Congress in 1980 to cut overall emissions in half by 2010.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium I’m Lester Graham.
The Great Lakes region is home to major power producers. But along with the electricity they make comes some amount of air pollution. When coal-fired power plants in Illinois and Ohio emit sulfur dioxides, prevailing winds blow them to the Northeast, where they can fall as acid rain. Several northeast states are suing those power plants to clean up their emissions. Earlier this summer, a professor at Clarkson University in northern New York coordinated a unique study to learn more about the life cycle of air pollution, from where it’s produced to where it lands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has the story:
Transcript
The Great Lakes region is home to major power producers. But along with the electricity they make comes some amount of air pollution. When coal-fired power plants in Illinois and Ohio emit sulfur dioxides, prevailing winds blow them to the Northeast, where they can fall as acid rain. Several northeast states are suing those power plants to clean up their emissions.
Earlier this summer, a professor at Clarkson University in northern New York coordinated a unique study to learn more about the life cycle of air pollution, from where it’s produced to where it lands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has the story.
Chemical engineering professor Phil Hopke will take any opportunity to get out of his office and over to his field lab. It consists of a concrete slab amongst the weeds in a corner of the local airport. Installed on the concrete are monitors he uses to find out exactly what’s in the air we breathe.
(sound of opening lock)
Hopke unlocks a gate in a chainlink fence. You can already hear a strange hum in the distance. It gets louder as Hopke strides up to one of three white machines the size of dishwashers.
“Come out and change the filters once a day. This one’s for organic constituents in the air.”
He pulls out what looks like an air filter for your furnace. These machines suck in air. They leave a unique footprint of chemicals on the filter that represents what was in the air in this place on this day — chemicals like sulfur dioxide and mercury. Hopke will send these filters to specialty labs around the world to be analyzed.
There are hundreds of stations like this in North America. Groups of researchers study daily air quality for every region of the country. They examine how things like traffic and smokestacks might affect the air we breathe.
But Hopke says they mostly focus on their own areas. They don’t often coordinate studies to see how the chemicals they find move from region to region.
“It struck me a couple of years ago, particularly in the Northeast, that we have these groups talking to one another.”
Working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Hopke convinced 26 sites in the East, from Texas to Toronto, to measure the same stuff on the same days. They chose the whole month of July.
It’s perhaps the largest simultaneous air sampling effort ever conducted in this country. When the data’s complete, the study will track the lifespan of pollution, from when it leaves a smokestack or a car’s tailpipe to when it is taken up by a tree or your lungs.
But scientists can’t just follow one molecule of pollution from a car in St. Louis to a lake in Michigan. They have to make models of how the chemicals move, like how meteorologists make weather maps to trace storm systems. As if that’s not complicated enough, says Hopke, naturally occurring chemicals make the job even tougher.
“You have to keep in mind that the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia are blue because of natural photochemical smog, particles being formed because of the pine materials that come off. Those materials that you smell are chemically reactive and will undergo the same type of smog reactions as human emitted materials.”
So researchers use techniques to separate out the “man-made” pollutants from the “natural” pollutants. Next they look for high concentrations of, say, sulfur dioxide in Chicago on July 15th. Then they follow those high levels east with prevailing winds. They look for high sulfur dioxide levels in Ohio or New York a few days later. After doing this many times in July for many types of chemicals, the researchers hope patterns will begin to emerge.
Hopke sits on a scientific advisory committee that helps the EPA develop pollution standards. He says this coordinated study will bring stronger science to the EPA’s sometimes controversial decisions.
“Suppose I require all power plants to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions by twenty percent. What does that do for me for particle concentrations in New York City? What will that do? Will that get us where we want in terms of clean air?”
With a study this large in scope, the answers to those questions won’t come quickly. The massive amount of data gathered in the study will take a few years to interpret.
In the meantime, Hopke and the EPA are planning another cooperative sampling effort for wintertime, when temperatures and people’s habits are different from summer.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
Great Lakes states are slowly complying with new EPA rules designed to reduce smog. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl explains:
Transcript
Great Lakes states are slowly complying with new EPA rules designed to reduce smog. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
The US EPA is requiring states to reduce emissions of Nitrogen Oxides, a main component in smog and ground level ozone. Coal-fired power plants and industrial boilers are the main producers of the pollutants. John Summerhays is an environmental scientist with the EPA’s Midwest Office. He says the reduction is an attempt to improve public health:
“The smog and ozone can cause a variety of health effects that are principally hard on the lungs. It can contribute to various lung diseases, so this is a big step forward for public health protection.”
Illinois and Indiana recently had their emission reduction plans approved by the Federal Government. Pennsylvania and New York have also been approved. Ohio and Michigan still have yet to submit reduction plans. The deadline for implementing the measures is 2004. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.
Last month (April) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided
against regulating ash and sludge from coal-burning power plants as a
toxic hazardous waste. Instead, the EPA will develop voluntary coal-ash
disposal standards. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne
Elston says the move is a major setback in the war against global
warming:
States around Lake Michigan are working with Missouri to reduce emissions from coal-burning power plants such as this one near St. Louis.
Read more about this story in the upcoming April edition of the magazine Illinois Issues.
States surrounding Lake Michigan are working together to reduce
air pollution. Instead of filing lawsuits against each other, the
states
agreed how to fix the problem. The federal government is keeping an
eye
on the agreement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:
States around Lake Michigan are working with Missouri to reduce emissions from coal-burning power plants such as this one near St. Louis.
Read more about this story in the upcoming April edition of the magazine Illinois Issues.
States surrounding Lake Michigan are working together to reduce
air pollution. Instead of filing lawsuits against each other, the
states
agreed how to fix the problem. The federal government is keeping an
eye
on the agreement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:
Earlier this month (November), the U-S justice department filed the
latest in a string of lawsuits aimed at reducing pollution from coal
fired generating stations. As Great Lakes Radio Consortium
commentator Suzanne Elston points out, instead off wasting all their
time suing each other, the jurisdictions involved should follow the
example set by New York State:
As summertime temperatures go up, so does our need for air conditioning.
But with much of our electricity coming from coal plants, this also
increases smog levels. As Great Lakes Radio Consortium Commentator Suzanne
Elston points out, the coming deregulation of the electricity industry may
provide us with some relief.
