Local News

The Bi-State Regional Commission is in the process of broadening membership on its Air Quality Task Force in the wake of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's finding that most of Rock Island, Scott and Muscatine counties are in non-compliance with air standards for fine particulate matter.

The task force was formed 10 years ago as a subcommittee of Bi-State's QC Urban Transportation Policy Committee and had been primarily concerned with ground-level ozone pollution in the metropolitan QC area.

Just before the start of 2009, Lee Enterprises filed its long-delayed annual report originally due out in early December. Lee's fiscal 2008 year ended Sept. 28.

The report paints a bleak financial picture for the fourth largest newspaper chain in the country (owner of the Quad City Times) and raises questions about its long-term survival.

After Lee's stock meltdown from nearly $15 a share in January 2008 to 41 cents as of Friday (1/2/09), the firm wrote down the value of its goodwill by $909 million, and reported a net operating loss of $888 million for the year, or $19.83 per share.

The 10K report discusses the restructuring of the firm's $1.4 billion debt, and the company's accounting firm reported it is uncertain of the chain's ability to weather the financial storm from declining revenues and accelerating debt payments.

Even before Monday's (12/22) designation of Scott, Rock Island and Muscatine counties as "non-attainment" for fine particulate pollution, Iowa and Illinois environmental agencies were hard at work analyzing 2008 air quality data to challenge the decision.

A loophole in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) non-attainment filing allows states to submit "complete, quality assured, certified 2008 data" prior to the effective date of the EPA rulemaking, Feb. 20, 2009, to obtain a reversal of the designation. Normally, states don't submit annual data until April, and certification of the data isn't required until July of the following year.

Air quality officials in Iowa have argued in earlier EPA submissions the 2005-2007 monitoring data used to determine non-attainment was skewed because of unusually hot weather, which affects formation of particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Monday (12/22) designated most of Scott, Rock Island and Muscatine counties as "non-attainment" areas for fine particulate pollution, rejecting last ditch efforts by local industry lobbyists to avoid the broad designation.

EPA narrowed its "non-attainment" area somewhat, but far less than sought by Quad City Development Group lobbyists and an ad hoc task force funded by several local governments and companies facing emission clean up requirements under the designation.

The EPA's initial designation included all of Scott, Muscatine and Rock Island Counties. In its final designations the non-attainment area includes most of those three counties, but excludes mainly outlying rural areas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should not back off of its plan to designate Scott, Rock Island and Muscatine counties as non-attainment for fine particulate pollution.

The non-attainment action will force the state of Iowa and Illinois to begin the long-term, and long overdue, process to reduce PM 2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers) in the entire bi-state area.

PM 2.5 emissions are harmful to all residents, but especially the very young and elderly, susceptible to the development of asthma and serious lung ailments. Only through implementation of a broad regional approach to PM 2.5 emissions will people of all ages be able to enjoy the basic right to breathe clean air.