lllinois School Buses Still Smoking Children

High levels of diesel exhaust from Illinois school buses are posing risks to children’s health, according to a the School Bus Pollution Report Card 2006, which found that the average Illinois school bus is nine years old and spews almost twice as much soot per mile driven as a typical big rig semi.

While still the safest way to get to school, some kids are on the bus two hours a day breathing levels of soot pollution that can trigger asthma attacks, as well as increase the risk of getting cancer. One recent report noted that nationally diesel exhaust is responsible for a lifetime lung cancer risk seven times greater than all other air toxics monitored by U. S.EPA combined. And that’s just the diesel exhaust pollution everyone breathes, not just on the bus. Breathing diesel exhaust contributes to increased asthma attacks, emergency room visits and hospital admissions among children. Yet by simply retrofitting school buses with ‘soot traps’ and ‘crankcase filters’ we can cut particulate emissions by 90% or better, both inside and outside the bus.

Dirty school buses contribute to dirty air both on and off the bus. Both Chicago and Metro East St. Louis already fail to meet minimal federal health standards for fine particulate matter pollution (i.e. “soot’). The state’s 19,031 school buses emit 141 tons of particulate matter every year. And just yesterday researchers at the American Thoracic Society meeting in San Diego released yet another study that links fine particles to deaths.

Illinois has taken small steps to clean up school buses with cheaper less-effective pollution controls, and has used some state funds and pollution fines from a corporation that got caught cheating in recent years to clean up some buses. Yet the state has been slow in cleaning up its fleet of aging school buses and received a “C” in the Report Card. Soot emissions from Illinois school buses dropped just 1.6 % in 2005.

Can the federal government help? SURE! Congress enacted some great programs to clean up diesel vehicles last year, but they just didn’t fund them. This year, Senator Durbin and the rest of the Illinois Congressional delegation can make a big difference in working to fully fund those clean up efforts and protect children's health.

A Blind Spot for Hot Spots

A new report by the U.S. EPA inspector general's office says the Bush administration's proprosed rules to limit mercury from power plant smokestacks would make it tougher to take action if "hot spots"--areas with large amounts of mercury--were discovered in nearby lakes and rivers, according to an article in today's Chicago Tribune.

The agency disagrees, releasing a statement Tuesday that asserts there is "no reason to believe that there will be utility-attributable hot spots anywhere in the country" once the new rules take effect.

Some of the EPA's own researchers, however, have contradicted the agency's official statements.

One study, to be published this summer in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, found that 70 percent of the mercury in Steubenville, Ohio, came from nearby coal plants. Another EPA study identified Chicago as a hot spot, with about two-thirds of the mercury that falls locally coming from coal plants and other sources within Illinois.

As the evidence mounts that the federal response to the problem of mercury in the environment is inadequate, the need for state laws such as Gov. Blagojevich's proposed plan to reduce power plant mercury emissions by 90 percent becomes more obvious.

Dept. of Natural Resources Hurting. Is It on the Mend?

Lew Friedman, the Chicago Tribune's outdoors reporter, cited a litany of damages to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources due to decimated budgets in a recent column:

- Elimination of nearly 500 employees had affected the IDNR's reputation.

- Department morale was low.

- Staffing of conservation police officers was at a 30-year low.

- Insufficient money for dredging had resulted in the harmful buildup of silt in many state park lakes.

For some time, Illinois' environmental community has said that insufficient funding for open space and conservation has had bad consequences. But this list of complaints wasn't by a group of angry advocates. Those are admissions of what has happened over the past three years by acting director Sam Flood and IDNR department heads.

The good news, they say, is that the budget has been increased by 14.3 percent this year, and it won't go down again.

"We've done a poor job of managing our water at our parks," said Tony Mayville, director of land management.

He said he hoped the funding was just the beginning of increases to cope with a widespread problem.

"I look at this as a long-term taking care of our land, our water," Mayville said. "A lot of people look at DNR [as] we are the parks. It's a good system. Does it need help right now? You bet. I spend most of my time pumping up the morale of the troops. As an agency, we're on the mend."

Let's hope it's a trend that continues.

Should the Chicago River be Cleaner?

How much would it cost to clean out the disease-bearing bacteria from the Chicago River? Is it worth it? A front-page article in the Chicago Tribune lays out the options, which range from a $541 million plan by the foot-dragging Metropolitan Water Reclamation District to $242 million as cited in a new report by the U.S. EPA.

Then again, when you read about how an overturned canoe can lead to a case of salmonella, or how bacteria levels in Chicago River wastewater near a treatment plant are more than 400 times higher than similar water in Phiadelphia's Delaware River, the investment seems worth it.

Carping About Mercury

The efforts to stop the spread of the invasive Asian Carp are back in the news this week, but with mixed messages. On Thursday the US Senate passed a spending bill that included $400,000 to keep the electric barrier across the Illinois River from running out of money and shutting down. The barrier is designed to keep the carp from invading Lake Michigan.

Today the Chicago Tribune reports on attempts to create a new fishing industry aimed at harvesting the carp for profit. There's even a cute sidebar with suggested chinese dishes that can be created using carp, right down to the wine pairings.

Before hailing the carp as a new economic development prize, however, we need to keep in mind that DNR has an advisory recommending against eating too many carp caught in the Illinois River (among others), due to their high mercury levels.

The Peoria Journal Star pointed out the bad news in an editorial this week:

The Illinois Public Interest Research Group recently reported that fish in 36 counties - including Woodford, Knox and Schuyler - exceed federal safety guidelines for mercury content. Furthermore, the state Department of Natural Resources has warned sportfishers to restrict consumption of carp caught in the Illinois, Mackinaw, DuPage and Kankakee rivers due to mercury contamination.

This is bad news for the state's burgeoning Asian carp industry, which hopes to turn the pests into profit by harvesting them for food. That includes Havana-based Carp Protein Products, which promised to bring about 90 jobs to the river community. It's hard to imagine that commercial fisheries can establish a viable carp market with the mercury threat hanging around.

Illinois should fish or cut bait here. The state already has awarded $100,000 to commercial carp research, with another $750,000 proposed. Before lawmakers devote any more money to such efforts, they'd be well-advised to tackle mercury reduction and cleanup. In addition to the nascent Asian carp industry, the public's health is on the line.

The editorial adds yet another voice to the clamor supporting the Blagojevich Administration's push for a 90 percent reduction in mercury emissions from coal plants, which is currently pending before the Illinois Pollution Control Board.

Budget Agreement a Mixed Bag for Open Space

A budget agreement has finally been worked out, and the General Assembly will likely finish voting on it in the next couple of days, and adjourn by Friday.

One of our concerns was a proposed open space fund raid. In the past two weeks legislators and Governor Blagojevich have received thousands of phone calls and letters opposing this idea. This public support has been crucial for the IEC lobbyists who were working on the issue. While we did not get everything we asked for, the final budget is quite a bit better than the original proposal.

The Open Space Land Acquisition and Development Fund (OSLAD) was slated to have $20 million raided, but this was fought off. In addition, the annual appropriation was increased from $20 million this year to $30 million for next year! Also, the Conservation 2000 program will receive a $12 million appropriation from this fund.

The Natural Areas Acquisition Fund was hit with a $5 million raid, but still received a full appropriation. Also, an agreement was reached to fully fund an update of the Natural Areas Inventory for $4.5 million over three years. For the coming year $2 million has been appropriated for this effort.

Otherwise, most of the budget is similar to last year. We’ll bring you more details as we’re able to finish reviewing the more than 1,000 pages of the various budget bills.

State of the Air Report 2006? good news,bad news for Illinois

With the first hints of an 80 degree day in the Chicago Metro area, the snow is definitely gone for good and summer is only a few weeks away. Hot dogs, beach outings, day camps for the kids, and …. smog. We are headed for yet another summer where the two largest metro areas in the state Chicago and Metro East will again be on the watch to warn the public about high air pollution days.

Last week the American Lung Association released the State of the Air Report 2006, and it shows that the Clean Air Act, despite numerous attempts to disembowel it at the federal level, is actually working. Air quality is getting better in Illinois, but over half of Illinoisans are still breathing air that doesn’t meeting minimal federal health standards. There were still a fair number of F’s giving out in the report for Illinois, but there were a few bright spots as well as several counties move up a letter grade compared to last years report. Check out the Illinois county grades

While the air is getting better and we are getting closer to meeting minimal federal standards for air quality, there is increasing evidence that even if we met the levels the federal government says are “safe”, the science is showing it isn’t. In December, US EPA came out with a recommendation on the particle pollution standard that simply ignored what the Agency’s outside air pollution health experts said was safe. This group, set up by the Clean Air Act itself, is composed of some of the best air pollution scientists in the country, who spent the last several years going over thousands of pages of published scientific research to make their recommendation. Needless to say they are a bit miffed that EPA Administrator Johnson is indicating that politics trumps “sound science” and they have formally complained.

So, US EPA now has to make a final decision by the end of September as to whether they are going to set health standards to really protect the health of the public, or whether to keep the status quo and watch a lot of preventable and unncessary deaths happen in coming years. In the meantime, breathe carefully out there.