Louisville air fails tougher EPA soot standard

• Violating air monitor is in Clark County%2C Indiana.
• Decision would mean no immediate changes for businesses because Louisville does not comply with the existing standard for soot.

Rejecting recommendations by Kentucky and Indiana, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has decided much of the Louisville area fails to meet the newest clean-air rules for soot.

The decision, if made final later this year, would help extend the region's decades-old dirty air stigma, even as air monitoring shows continued improvement. It also would mean continued extra scrutiny on businesses and the emissions they create, and a new effort by local regulators to reduce the pollutants that cause soot and other tiny particulates that can lodge deeply in lungs and get into people's blood.

"It is something we have to deal with, with this agency being the driver," said Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District Executive Director Keith H. Talley Sr.

But Talley and a top Kentucky air quality official said they may fight the EPA designation during a public comment period. The government agencies may argue that when the most current air monitoring is factored in — from 2014 — the Louisville area will comply, said Sean Alteri, director of the Kentucky Division for Air Quality.

Greater Louisville Inc., the metro chamber of commerce, is encouraging regulators to request that EPA reconsider.

"We are so close" to compliance, said Susan Overton, spokeswoman for GLI, that it makes sense for authorities to "take a hard look" at the EPA proposal.

"The business community has always stepped up when we have been non-attainment, and we have made great strides," she added.

A longtime environmental health advocate, however, urged regulators to accept the EPA designation and work harder to improve air quality.

Thousands of area residents suffer from medical conditions made worse by this especially hazardous type of air pollution, said Carolyn Embry, a former Louisville air district board member. It also puts healthy people at risk, said Embry, who also works for the American Lung Association of Kentucky.

Merely meeting clean-air standards is not enough to protect everyone, she added.

At issue is something the EPA calls PM 2.5, or particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. EPA has linked exposure to fine particles to premature death from heart or lung disease, cardiac arrhythmia, heart attacks, asthma attacks and bronchitis.

The EPA in 2013 tightened its annual average standard from 15 micrograms per cubic meter to 12 micrograms per cubic meter. A monitor in Clark County, Ind., was found to exceed that standard based on three years of monitoring, though just barely, with a major cause being pollution from Louisville, said the air district's assistant director, Rachael Hamilton.

Indiana had acknowledged its monitor's elevated readings but argued that soot levels were declining and headed toward compliance. In a letter sent Tuesday to Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the EPA said it had determined a violation at the Clark County monitor. A similar letter was sent to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear.

The EPA also determined that it could not use any soot monitoring from Louisville in making its decision because Louisville data had been ruled not valid for regulatory purposes. State and federal audits last year found that years of pollution compliance was analyzed improperly, leading to a shake-up of the agency.

Hamilton said the invalid data was not a factor in the EPA's proposed designation because it was based on elevated readings in Indiana, which had no data problems.

If there's good news, Hamilton said, it is that the Louisville area is on its way toward complying with the tougher standard.

She said new pollution controls being installed at LG&E's Mill Creek power plant, and the conversion of the utility's Cane Run power plant from coal to natural gas, will help. Hamilton also said new motor vehicle standards that have not yet been implemented will reduce emissions from cars and should improve Louisville air quality.

"There are just a whole lot of other things in play," she said.

If the EPA stays with its proposal, district officials said they would gather a group of businesses and other interests to develop a plan to comply with the standard by a 2021 deadline.

EPA also said it was designating portions of Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties in Northern Kentucky in violation.

Both letters said the new standard "will provide increased protection for children, older adults, persons with heart and lung disease, and other at-risk populations against an array of PM 2.5-related adverse health effects."

EPA also said "history shows us that better health and cleaner air go hand-in-hand."

Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 or on Twitter @jbruggers.