Despite environmentalists' calls for a faster schedule to lower fine particulate pollution in Muscatine, the latest Iowa Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) draft implementation plan would not require such emissions be within federal air quality standards until 2017.
At issue is the speed at which Grain Processing Corporation (GPC) – which currently emits 538 tons of particulate matter less than 2.5 microns (PM 2.5) annually – would be required to put in place dozens of pollution control improvements the firm has begun, but is not expected to complete until December 2016.
In its latest draft now being circulated, the IDNR says PM 2.5 emissions would be reduced by nearly 370 tons per year, with the majority of that reduction from GPC.
"Due to the scale and complexity of the changes at GPC, GPC has developed a phased implementation schedule that begins in 2013 and concludes in December 2016," according to the IDNR.
"Based on the planned scheduled for implementation of the control strategy and on-going implementation of federal regulations that will continue to reduce regional levels of PM 2.5, DNR believes that attainment requirements established by the EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) in the State Implementation Plan call can be achieved by the end of calendar year 2017," the IDNR said in its draft plan.
However, the Muscatine environmental group, Clean Air Muscatine (CLAM), says EPA rules require a much faster completion of pollution control to reduce PM 2.5. In comments at the IDNR's public hearing in June, Sherry Leonard of CLAM said EPA issued the call for a State Implementation Plan in July 2011 with the expectation attainment of the federal standards would be achieved in 2014.
"While the DNR mentions the scale and complexity of changes at GPC and that GPC has developed a phased implementation schedule, there is no adequate explanation as to why there is a delay of attainment until 2017," Leonard said.
"Citizens in Muscatine who have experienced a deterioration of their environment are sometimes left to wonder whether in, at least some instances, the enforcement of our environmental laws has been too lax," the CLAM board member told the IDNR at the public hearing. "Muscatine's air quality deterioration has not happened suddenly, it has been caused over a period of years and largely by a few regulated businesses whose owners have been indifferent to our laws and harms caused by those laws that are not followed."
As the IDNR moves to finalize the plan for reducing PM 2.5 pollution in Muscatine, the agency reported last month that 61 of the 62 air exceedances of federal air quality standards in the state occurred in Muscatine.
Air monitors in Muscatine so far in 2013 have recorded 58 instances where sulfur dioxide (SO2) levels exceeded federal ambient air quality standards and three instances where PM 2.5 pollution exceeded the air quality standards. The remaining exceedance was recorded in Sioux City for PM 2.5.
