Conscious Choice: New Environmental Laws

July 1999 | News of the Earth

New Environmental Laws

by Dave Aftandilian

On Thursday, May 27, the Illinois legislature ended its spring session with the usual month-long flurry of late-breaking legislation. Now that our state legislators have returned to their home districts for a long summer recess, it seems like a good time to take a look at some of the environmental laws they passed this spring.

Illinois FIRST Infrastructure Program

Beginning with last things first, the Illinois state legislature on the last day of its extended spring session passed a $42.8 billion state budget that includes funding for Governor George Ryan’s $12 billion, five-year Illinois FIRST infrastructure program. The Fund for Infrastructure, Roads, Schools, and Transit (FIRST) consists of a $4.1 billion supplement to the state’s existing programs for road, rail, and air infrastructure; a $4.1 billion allocation for bus, rail, and other mass transit infrastructure needs in northeastern Illinois and other cities with established transit districts; a $2.2 billion allocation to the state’s existing school construction fund; and a $1.6 billion allocation for local community projects (see below for details). Increased vehicle registration fees, title transfer fees, and alcohol taxes provide most of the revenue needed for Illinois FIRST.

Environmentally speaking, the jury is still out on Illinois FIRST. The $4.1 billion "Transportation 21 Plan," holds the key to the funding package’s long term sustainability. If the transportation money is primarily used to repair roads and aging infrastructure, then it will be a success. However, if the powerful highway lobby gets the unallocated money for new road construction, then we can expect traffic congestion and the associated pollution, habitat destruction, and other woes connected with sprawl development to increase.

Perhaps more troubling in the long run, though, is the $75 million the plan sets aside for land acquisition and planning for one of Governor Ryan’s favorite projects — a new regional airport at the Peotone site in Will County. We’ll have more about this in next month’s issue, but for now let’s just say that we need a third airport in northeastern Illinois about as much as we need any heavily polluting, resource-devouring, sprawl-promoting project in an area where farmland and open space are seriously endangered already.

Illinois FIRST’s "Transit 2000 Plan" has some good news for the rapidly deteriorating mass transit systems of Chicagoland. For instance, with the matching funds this plan will provide from the state, the CTA will be able to leverage additional resources from the federal government to help rebuild the Douglas blue line, expand service on the Ravenswood brown line, and restore the fare subsidy for students and seniors. In addition, Metra will be able to proceed with badly needed new rail transit projects for the suburbs, as well as repairs of already-existing lines.

And the "Fund for Illinois’ Future" provided by Illinois FIRST will pay for a number of environmental projects on the local level. These will include brownfield and landfill remediation and redevelopment; additional bike trails, parks, and recreational facilities; and resource and historic preservation projects.

Compromise Bill on Hog Farms

Just as small family farms have increasingly given way to huge industrial operations in recent years, so too has livestock raising shifted toward increasingly concentrated facilities (see "Agribusiness" articles in the May 1999 issue of Conscious Choice). With hundreds or thousands of animals confined in smaller and smaller spaces, enormous amounts of waste are produced, posing serious hazards to human health and the environment. For instance, "lagoons" in which hog wastes are stored have a history of breaking and spilling millions of gallons of waste into rivers and streams, killing fish and spreading infectious bacteria far and wide. Even when properly contained, such wastes can still pose problems; if too much is spread as fertilizer on farmers’ fields, the waste can run off into local water sources during heavy rains.

Given these serious concerns, a coalition of environmental groups has been pressing the Illinois State legislature to enact stricter standards regulating livestock facilities than those contained in the industry-friendly Livestock Facilities Management Act (LFMA) that passed in 1995. After the issue was fought to a stalemate last spring, Governor Ryan intervened this year to help work out a compromise bill to amend the LFMA; the Senate passed the bill in March, and the House approved it unanimously in April.

While the compromise plan is definitely a step in the right direction, it still has some of the flaws of the original LFMA. On the positive side, the plan requires owners or operators of livestock waste-handling facilities to report waste spills within 24 hours of their discovery, and contains large enough penalties for non-compliance — up to $1,000 for a second offense — to encourage such reporting. The plan also includes construction standards and requirements for all livestock waste handling facilities, not just lagoons, and includes provisions banning large (500-plus "animal units") livestock farms from being constructed in floodplains, areas with karst topography (regions with underground sinks, streams, or caverns), or "any area where aquifer material is found five feet or less below the bottom of the livestock management facility or the livestock waste handling facility." In addition, the plan sets a limit on how much phosphorous (a component of manure) can be applied as fertilizer, increases the required "setback" distances from livestock facilities for farm residences, and makes it clear that the owners of large livestock facilities, and not just the farmers they hire to raise the animals, are legally liable for damages caused by waste spills.

On the down side, the compromise plan does not give local residents any real power to prevent large livestock facilities from locating in their neighborhoods. Although residents will be allowed to provide input about proposed facilities before they are built, this input will be advisory only; the Illinois Department of Agriculture will make the final decision about whether a facility may be constructed. No limits are set on the number of new livestock facilities that can be built, and the pollution-control provisions of the new plan are less strict than many environmentalists had hoped.

Safer Pesticides in Schools

While nobody likes to see a cockroach scurrying across the floor or sugar ants sashaying in a miniature conga line through our kitchen cupboards, the heavy-duty chemicals we often deploy to evict such uninvited invertebrate guests can wreak just as much if not more havoc on our health than the pests themselves. That’s why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), and the PTA all recommend Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as a safer, and often cheaper, alternative to repeated applications of chemical pesticides.

As defined in the Illinois Structural Pest Control Act, IPM emphasizes prevention and relies as much as possible on nontoxic, biological, cultural, or mechanical pest management methods. And if chemical pesticides have to be applied, IPM recommends the use of products proven to be least harmful to human health and the environment.

In 1992, the Illinois State legislature amended the Illinois Structural Pest Control Act to encourage schools "to adopt an integrated pest management program that incorporates the guidelines developed by the Illinois Department of Public Health." Though the IDPH developed IPM guidelines and held a series of workshops about them in 1994, schools didn’t seem to want to adopt the new methods. According to a survey released by the Safer Pest Control Project in 1998, 82 percent of 106 public schools and school districts surveyed continue to routinely spray chemical pesticides at their facilities.

This is a serious problem, because children tend to be more sensitive to chemicals than adults, which means that pesticides pose a special health risk to them. Also, pesticide spraying often doesn’t treat the root causes of pest infestations, such as poor sanitation and pest entry points, and can lead to the development of pesticide-resistant pests, which would require the use of even more toxic pesticides and could result in even greater risks to children’s health.

To help schools break out of this vicious cycle, Illinois legislators passed "IPM in Schools" (SB 529), a new amendment to the Structural Pest Control Act, in May. This bill requires (instead of "encourages") schools to adopt IPM programs by August 1, 2000, unless a school demonstrates that such a program would cost the school more than it is currently paying for pest management. The amendment also requires that schools provide written notification in advance of pesticide spraying, either to those who have specifically requested such notification, or to all parents, guardians, and school employees through already-established newsletters, calendars, or other public means. Another bill that passed this spring, "Parents’ Right-to-Know" (SB 527), requires similar notification of pesticide spraying by schools, but would take effect immediately on being signed into law.

As of this writing, Governor Ryan had not yet signed either of these bills. But judging by the overwhelming majorities with which they passed in both the Senate and the House, it seems almost certain that Governor Ryan will approve them, too.

For more information on IPM, contact the Safer Pest Control Project at 312-641-5575.

National Ambient Air Quality

In July of 1997, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used its authority under the Clean Air Act to issue new, stricter national ambient air quality standards for particulate matter (soot) and ground-level ozone (the primary constituent of smog). The new rules would reduce the allowable levels of ground-level ozone in the air from the previous limit (last revised in 1979) of 120 parts per billion in one hour to 80 parts per billion in any eight-hour period. The rules would also, for the first time, set a limit (65 micrograms per cubic meter in any 24-hour period) for fine particles — those less than 2.5 microns in size — which many studies have shown to lodge deep in lung tissue and cause the most damage to human health.

The EPA estimates that each year the updated standards would prevent approximately 15,000 premature deaths, 350,000 cases of aggravated asthma, and 1 million cases of significantly decreased lung function in children, as well as protect the health of 125 million Americans, including 35 million children. Due to the high costs of health care, complying with these proposed standards would cost significantly less than treating people adversely affected by air pollution. In fact, the EPA estimates that the costs of compliance would be about $6.5 to 8.5 billion per year, while the benefits to public health and the environment would be $120 billion per year.

The new standards would also result in substantial benefits for agriculture and the environment. Ground-level ozone interferes with the ability of plants to produce and store food; according to the EPA, these effects have been shown to significantly reduce agricultural yields for many economically important crops (e.g., soybeans, kidney beans, wheat, and cotton). Ecological functions such as water movement, mineral nutrient cycling, and habitats for various species are also adversely impacted by ground-level ozone. One of the key components of ozone, nitrogen oxides, contributes to fish kills and algae blooms in sensitive waterways. And we’re all familiar with the dirty brown haze of particulate pollution, which reduces visibility not just where it’s produced, but many miles away. For example, small particles belched from vehicles on Los Angeles freeways cloud the air over the Grand Canyon, where up to one third of the haze comes from southern California, and even affect visibility in the Rocky Mountain National Park, where 20 percent of the problem on the dirtiest days is attributed to Los Angeles-generated smog.

Developed after a lengthy review of relevant scientific studies, the new standards were supported by environmentalists, public health officials, and the general public. But they were vigorously opposed by industry groups, especially auto, steel, chemical, utility, paper, and coal mining businesses, which spent over $30 million in unsuccessful attempts first to prevent the EPA from adopting the new rules, and later to block them in Congress.

Unfortunately, the latest tactic in industry’s assault on the revised standards — which the Natural Resources Defense Council considers "among the most important steps forward on the environment in the past several years" — has proven successful. On May 14, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned the standards with a two to one to one decision in a case brought by an alliance of several members of Congress, coal-based utilities, car manufacturers, and the states of Ohio, Michigan, and West Virginia (where many big polluters are based). The panel, in a ruling that the New York Times correctly characterized as "bizarre and tortured," held that the Clean Air Act as applied in these standards is unconstitutional as an improper delegation of legislative authority to the EPA.

It’s probably no accident that the two Reagan-appointed members of the panel sided against the EPA in the ruling, while the sole Clinton appointee, Judge David S. Tatel, dissented, saying that "the court ignores the last half-century of Supreme Court nondelegation jurisprudence." One of the strangest elements in the decision is that the panel rejected the central arguments of industry’s case. For instance, the ruling acknowledged that "the growing empirical evidence demonstrating a relationship between fine particle pollution and adverse health effects amply justifies establishment of new fine particle standards." Nor did anything in the decision undercut or criticize the process the EPA used to draft the standards. Yet the panel still ruled against the standards.

The Clinton Administration has said that it is "deeply disappointed" by the panel’s ruling, and Carol Browner, Administrator of the EPA, testified before a Senate subcommittee that "the decision is illogical.... By finding this section of the Clean Air Act unconstitutional, the court has struck at the heart and soul of this legislation that is so crucial to the health of our families." Although the decision still leaves other avenues for particulate reduction available to the EPA, such as the Tier 2 auto pollution and clean gasoline standards on which public comments are currently being solicited, it is very likely that the EPA and the Department of Justice will appeal the decision to the full Court of Appeals, and to the Supreme Court if necessary.

For more information, visit the U.S. EPA’s Air Regs & Rules web page.

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