DNR to recommend no restrictions for Cape Girardeau County ozone

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources decided Monday that Cape Girardeau County should not be designated as an area beset by ozone pollution.

The recommendation, a reversal of an earlier decision, will go before the Missouri Air Conservation Commission on Feb. 3 for ratification, said Jeff Bennett, air quality unit modeling chief in DNR's Air Pollution Control Program.

The decision is good news for economic development officials, who worried that the area could lose out on potential new industries if tighter emission restrictions are imposed on new pollution sources.

Instead of being named as a "nonattainment" area for ozone pollution, the county will be listed as unclassifiable, Bennett said. The difference means that Cape Girardeau County will escape controls on development and industrial expansion that could have been imposed to reduce ozone pollution.

The original recommendation was based on readings at an air pollution monitor located near Farrar, Mo., in southern Perry County. Cape Girardeau County was included with Perry County in a new nonattainment area because the department considers Cape Girardeau County polluters to be a major contributor to the readings that violate national ozone standards.

The DNR staff still believes Cape Girardeau County contributes to the poor readings but is not certain that it is the most significant contributor, Bennett said.

"The technical finding is that Cape Girardeau County does have a significant impact downwind," Bennett said. "What the change is there is that there is a policy question about what is the EPA going to do about these newly designated areas."

Ozone is a three-atom molecule of oxygen. In the upper atmosphere, ozone protects the Earth from damaging solar radiation.

Ozone pollution at the surface occurs when sunlight reacts with volatile organic chemicals and nitrogen oxide, a significant component of automobile exhaust. In high concentrations, it creates the haze on a summer day often referred to as smog. The chemicals that cause ozone build up during stagnant air periods.

The monitor at Farrar, Mo., exceeded the federal eight-hour standard of 75 parts per billion on 36 days from 2005 to 2007. There were no days in violation during 2008, an improvement aided by a cooler and wetter-than-normal summer.

While the department considers Cape Girardeau County to be a contributor to Perry County's violations, a report sponsored by the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce and Cape Girardeau Area Magnet under the name the "Concerned Citizens for Economic Growth Coalition" disagrees. The report challenges the assumptions about the source of ozone pollution and contends that the pollutants contributing to high readings in Farrar could be the result of "long-range transport" from metro areas to the east, north and south of Cape Girardeau County.

If the recommendation is approved Feb. 3, the EPA must also rule on the designation and that could take up to a year, Bennett said.

For more information, check back at semissourian.com or read Wednesday's Southeast Missourian.