The Central Illinois Healthy Community Alliance is calling on the US EPA to tighten Ozone Ground Level Standards.
The group says the Clean Air Task Force report shows a need for more stringent requirements on Coal-Fired Power Plants like the Dynegy facility outside of Bartonville.
Tracy Fox is with Central Illinois Healthy Community Alliance. She says the health impacts associated with Edwards Coal plant emissions are worse than initial EPA estimates. “When the task force ran its models with Edwards actual 2012 [emissions] data instead of EPA predictions, it attributed four times the public health harms, 29 premature deaths, 45 heart attacks and 490 asthma incidents every single year.”
The group is asking the US EPA to adjust the Ozone Ground Level standard from 75 to 60 parts per billion. Under the recommended standard the Peoria area would have had 11 Ozone Action Days this year. Under the current measurement standard Peoria hasn’t had a single Ozone Action Day in 2014.