 So, welcome. Thank you all for coming. I'm so glad to see you. My name is Luanne Burton. I am on the board of the League of Women Voters Sheboygan County and I am the chair of the Environment Committee. I'll be your host for this evening. I'd like to thank Meade Public Library for being a venue for many important public events such as this. Before we begin I'd like to introduce our distinguished guests. Please stand or wave when I call your name. From Senator Ron Johnson's office we have a staffer Camille Solberg. We have candidate Kyle Welton running for State Senate in District 9 and we have candidate Rebecca Clark running in the 26th Assembly District. Ryan, if you don't mind while you're sneaking in. Ryan Sorenson is an older person in District 8 in Sheboygan County. Can everybody hear me okay because I can turn it up. We're good? Okay. This event is being broadcast live on WSCS. Links to the video and slides will be available at WSCSSheboygan.com and at our League website and Facebook page. The League of Women Voters Sheboygan County formed in the spring of last year. Our new 100-member League is part of a century- old non-partisan organization that has encouraged informed and active civic participation in government since before women earned the right to vote. The League's women and men work to increase understanding of major issues and to influence public policy through advocacy. League membership is open to anyone 16 and up. Nationally the League has long led efforts to protect air, land and water resources. Accordingly it has been an active supporter of science-based environmental legislation backed by enforcement. The League worked to help pass the Clean Air Act in the 1970s, protect it in the 1980s and strengthen it in the 1990s. This work continues today. Here in Sheboygan County, this is the Environment Committee's third free public event. The first was about issues affecting the Lake Michigan watershed and the second was about climate change. Other events the Sheboygan County League has sponsored include forums on fair voting maps and the Affordable Care Act, voter registration events and candidate forums. Tonight we're bringing you a complex topic of concern to all stakeholders in Sheboygan County and we've brought in leading experts. We have a lot of ground to cover, so for the Q&A following the panel, the moderator will read questions from the League of Women Voters Sheboygan County and the audience. Have all the audience questions been turned in? Have you had an opportunity? You can raise your hand if you can still do it. It's just now is the time. That's all. Yeah. All right. Okay. Oops. Going. No, this is right. Okay. A few reminders. Please silence your cell phones. And if you need to use the restroom, they are located in the vestibule. And now I'd like to introduce our moderator for this evening, Deb Sable Williams. She will also facilitate the Q&A. Dr. Donna Kensky. Dr. Donna Kensky is a data scientist at the Lake Michigan Air Directors Consortium or LADCO, a nonprofit funded by the US EPA and the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. LADCO works with those states to develop their implementation plans with the use of special purpose monitoring studies and statistical models to correlate air quality with meteorologic patterns and emissions. Her specialized areas of expertise include advanced monitoring technologies and observation based models for source attribution of fine particulate matter and haze. She earned her MS in public health and her doctorate in environmental and occupational health sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she is now an adjunct associate professor. She served for five years on the EPA's Clean Air Science Advisory Committee and now chairs a Midwestern State Data Analysis work group. She also reviews articles for four leading journals in her field. Please welcome Dr. Donna Kensky. Thank you so much. Thank you, Luanne and Kristen for inviting me to be here. I'm very, very happy to be here now. I just need to. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to give you a quick and dirty version of ozone chemistry and physics in the atmosphere and talk about a special study we did that's that included a lot of monitoring here in Sheboygan. And we'll start with we'll start with Ladco. My bio gave you a little bit of a clue, but we are we are the Midwestern MJO, which is a multi jurisdictional organization. And I'm going to apologize right now for all the acronyms and abbreviations. That's that's the way we speak. And I will try my best to, you know, minimize that. But we work with the six states, the six Great Lakes states to help them. We're a technical organization. We do, we do air pollution modeling, we do statistics, we do anything we can to help the states achieve the national ambient air quality standards for ozone for PM 2.5, as well as other any other pollutants of interest. So we, we being led co we were formed back in 1989. So we're almost 30 years old. And ozone was our reason for being back in the beginning, we sort of expanded our, our purview over over the years. But as I said, air pollution science is our is our business. Another important function of Ladco is to bring our states to the table to talk together about their air pollution problems. Back in the in the early 90s, late 80s, when we were formed, the states in trying to meet the ozone standard, then it was a very contentious process. And states turned to lawsuits to solve their air pollution issues. And that's not a that's not a very functional way to achieve air air pollution goals when we know that the air doesn't respect state boundaries. So by providing a table and a place for the states to come together to share their data to share their information to work out reasonable attainment plans together, we feel like we're justifying our existence and helping to promote clean air in a more, you know, for for the region as a whole, and remove some of the bad feelings among among states. Okay, so we're we're technical people, we do modeling, we do data analysis. Oh, I was going to ask you a question before I got got to this slide. Because I'm an academic and I thought I'd make everybody really comfortable by by giving you a pop quiz. And asking you if you thought the air was getting better or getting worse. And here's our here's our last almost two decades of ozone trends. And as you can see, the air is getting cleaner, we've we've made huge progress. And this is a message that doesn't always get out to the to the public, I think in a in an easy to understand way. So what you're looking at here are each of the little boxes is reflects all the data from multiple monitors across across our our six state region. So this is not just Wisconsin, although we'll see some some Wisconsin data shortly. So the middle of each box of each box contains the middle 50% of the measurements and then the upper 25% lower 25% are below are above and below. And the line runs through the middle. Now, it's a little hard to see. And maybe especially for you in the back, there are three red lines on that plot. We've had three ozone standards in the in the last, I don't know, 20 years, a little more than 20 years. So so that top line is the 1997 air quality standard of 80, essentially 85 parts per billion. The next line down is the 2008 standard, which was at at 75 parts per billion. And then that that bottom red line is is at 70 parts per billion. And that's the current standard from 2015. So so what I want to point out is is that maybe this Oh, does that work? Oh, it does great. Okay, so so look at these these last this is through 2017 these last three years, the vast majority of our measurements are below the standard. Compared to compared to, you know, the beginning of the 2000s, almost all of the data was above our current standard. We had, you know, we weren't, we weren't exceeding the standard back then. But the efforts to to make oops, I didn't mean to do that. Okay, there we go. Our our efforts to control these, these, you know, these observations these high ozone concentrations have led to most of our most of our geographic area being in attainment. And so let's take a little, a little closer look at the the geography of ozone. You can see some some red and dark purple spots on this map and they're clustered around Lake Michigan. That's probably not a surprise. If you've thought or read about ozone, our other issues with no ozone on attainment in the in the region are in urban areas. You can see St. Louis and Louisville and Cincinnati and Cleveland a little bit in Detroit. But but this is this is the area we're going to talk most about tonight. But by and large, you do not we don't have we don't have any ozone on attainment outside of urban areas, except for the Lakeshore. So it's we have a somewhat we have an interesting situation, which I'm going to talk a little more about. So just to have a little local flavor here, these are our trends at two of those, two of those important monitors. Chihuahua prairie is down in Racine or Kenosha, Kenosha County, I knew I could never keep them straight. So it's right on the right on the Illinois border. And Shaboygan, of course, here, there's a monitor at Colorado State Park. And both Chihuahua and Shaboygan are consistently the highest monitor highest reading monitors in Wisconsin. And and they are currently in non attainment. They've been in non attainment for ages and ages. And we can. So so this this plot shows actual measurements for for the non at least these box plots represent measurements in the in the whole non attainment area around around the lake. Well, just to eat the western half of the lake. So the Chicago, Chicago, Milwaukee, Shaboygan, non attainment, non non attainment areas. And the little the red dot and purple dot at the top of each of those boxes are the Chihuahua and Shaboygan values. These are the fourth high, fourth high values for each year. That's the ozone. Comparing ozone to to the non attain to the attainment ambient air quality standard. We come up with this seemingly convoluted manipulation of the data. We count the fourth high value over a year of monitoring the fourth high eight hour average. We and so and then we average that value for three consecutive years and compare that value with the ambient air quality standard to determine whether areas inner out of attainment. So that that's why I'm I will talk some of these plots show design values in some show fourth high. But the important thing is the trend. And and again, so so here's to walkie. And here's Shaboygan, of course. Okay, so some things we know about ozone. And some things we don't. We know NOx plus VOCs plus sunlight gives us ozone. So what's NOx and what's VOCs? Those are NOx and VOCs are products of combustion. So when you burn, when you burn any fuel with carbon in it, you you get some amount of VOCs. And you get you get some some NOx NOx is more of a high temperature specific. So so NOx comes out of cars and combustion engines, power plants, maybe not so much from your backyard barbecue. But well, but but backyard barbecues can contribute other other pollutants. So okay, so those are precursors. We don't nothing emits ozone, we don't worry about industry emitting ozone. It's only these these two classes of compounds that that react together when it's hot and when there's sunlight to form ozone. Okay, but we don't know the ratio of NOx to VOCs across our region. And we really need to understand that in order to be able to make policies and control measures that that will, you know, attack the right things. And I should also add this is not a linear process. So if you cut NOx by 50%, you'd think, well, that's going to remove 50% of the ozone. And it doesn't it doesn't work that way at all. It's, it's completely non intuitive. Sometimes you can reduce NOx and increase ozone. Sometimes you increase VOCs, reduce ozone. It just depends much of it depends on that NOx to VOC ratio. So that's that's really key. And that's a, you know, a big, a big source of uncertainty for us. We know that ozone precursors this NOx and VOC, we know that those chemicals from Illinois and Indiana and Michigan and Wisconsin, flow out over the lake, we often have westerly winds that carry carry those pollutants out over Lake Michigan. And they cook out there. They cook to, you know, when it's hot and sunny, just forming ozone to beat the band. It's a very it's an ideal process for making ozone out over the lake. But but we don't have a good grasp on how much that ozone on on any given day, how much we can attribute to Illinois or Indiana or Wisconsin, because conditions changed over time and with with meteorology. So this is a that's another uncertainty that we we need more information about. We know ozone values at our monitors, all those little dots on the map. We know that we know what ozone is at those little dots. But there's a lot of space between those dots. And there's no dots out over the lake. We, we, you know, although we know that ozone is high, because occasionally we make measurements out there. We don't have any routine way to see what that ozone out over the lake is doing before the wind changes and brings it back on shore to us. Okay. And we know we have models, we have fancy sophisticated atmospheric models that that tell us about the lake breeze that there's this typical pattern where where the pollutants get wafted out over the lake, they cook on us on a on a sunny afternoon. And and then the the lake breeze brings it back in on shore. And and then and then we see high ozone. And then you have a beautiful, mostly rural place like Sheboygan that has high ozone and is in non attainment for without without benefit of their own VOC is in Knox. So but our models are not perfect. And we'll see we'll see a little bit about that. Also, there it's a very, it's, I'm saying a lot that it's it's complicated that the models are our best, our best tool, but they do in part to these shortcomings. We, we realized that we needed better information. And it had been a long time since we went out in the field and did a field study to collect information about about ozone that would be useful for for helping our helping our models. So so let go along with a number of other academic partners and federal and and state partners launched a plan for a field study in 2016. And for the study to take place in 2017. So so this is just a couple of pictures of our of our trailers at Zion and our our aircraft. A field study is is a complicated, expensive undertaking. So it was a was kind of a leap of faith to to get out there and get all these organizations together. But our so our our objectives were to make measurements of ozone relevant, relevant compounds. So so NOx, VOCs, not just all total VOCs, but individual VOCs, it's a whole class of compounds. That there are hundreds of things to measure. We wanted to be able to quantify this relative contribution of states and particular emission sources to to ozone production along the lake. We want to evaluate our models. We want to look at this lake breeze. Is that red card for me? Oh, okay, I'll I'll wrap it up. So so mostly we're collecting a lot of data to fix our models. We had we had NASA aircraft out over Lake Michigan. We had a NOAA ship making measurements out over the lake. We had mobile monitoring vans driving up and down the lake shore and away from the lake shore. We had stationary super sites that were, you know, had one of one of which was here in Sheboygan at the spaceport. And one was in Zion. We had forecasters. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna skip over here and just show you this is an example of some of our measurements. We were fortunate. We captured two significant ozone episodes, which gave our researchers a lot of data, a lot of data to play with. This is just a great image of that lake breeze where where the westerly winds get stopped by the by the easterly winds coming over the lake. And and that that's a very difficult phenomenon to get your model to reproduce correctly. We had the airplane taking measurements of NOx. So so that it's a little fuzzy there on the on the left. But but this this NASA aircraft is incredible has an incredible instrument that can scan beneath it over over a swath of land and come up with this two dimensional image of emissions, which really helps us narrow down where where things are. So Dr. Kensky, in the interest of time, we have Okay, okay. All right, we've got a report coming out. Our synthesis report will be out in a month or two. We've we're working on the photochemistry and the modeling best practices. This was this was a fantastic opportunity to to nail down answers about the lake breeze effect on Sheboygan and to be able to quantify that ozone contribution that everybody really wants to know. So thank you for your attention. Donna Wynnsky is director of public policy for the American Lung Association in Wisconsin. She's been with the Lung Association for 24 years and oversees all of the organization's environmental air quality programs. She's been involved in efforts to strengthen federal air quality standards and to enforce the Clean Air Act. A graduate of Lawrence University in Appleton, Miss Wynnsky has a master's degree in mass communications from UW Milwaukee. She grew up in Sheboygan, where she still has friends and family and visits often. Please welcome Donna Wynnsky. Thank you. Yes, I actually got here at about one o'clock this afternoon. My sister still owns our family home over on Fifth Street across from Grant School. And so I was able to kill two birds with one stone by having a couple of new light fixtures installed in the house. Take a shower and then come here. I will move along quickly. I'm with the American Lung Association. We are the oldest voluntary health agency in Wisconsin, 110 plus years old. We also are a science based organization. So I was very pleased to hear that from the League of Women Voters. All of our policies are based on science peer reviewed science. And and I guess that's a good place for the end of that sentence. Okay, so why do we worry about ozone ozone? It doesn't smell bad. You don't see it. So what's the big deal about ozone? Well, just about everybody in this room, if you thought about it, has someone in their family or neighbor, a friend, a co worker who is that who faces a higher risk from ozone pollution. Children for one thing, the lungs are the last, the last organ in the body to fully develop. They don't completely develop until about early adolescence. They play outside a great deal of time. They run around and so they're taking in more oxygen by per volume compared to their weight. And they just face higher risks as a result of their growing lungs and those conditions being outdoors. Older adults also are higher risk because the lungs naturally decline with age. So those of us who are middle aged and beyond our lungs are not quite as resilient as they were when we were in our 30s or 20s. And our immune systems start to decline a little bit. So even healthy adults can be potentially at risk. Of course, anybody with a chronic lung disease and or cardiovascular disease has a higher risk. So if you have asthma, if you have COPD, if you have a family member with one of those conditions, heart disease, heart risk disease, all of those are impacted by the quality of air that you breathe on a daily basis. People with lower income also are higher risk. And that's simply because of their geography for the most part. Poor people live closer to sources of pollution. For example, in Milwaukee where I live, if you if you happen to live in one of the areas that is close to the freeway, you're going to be exposed to greater air pollution than if you live out in the suburbs or or in a more northern community. So people who live closer to power plants in in industrial areas, all of those sources of the NOx and the VOCs that the doctor was talking about previously, the closer you live to those, the greater your health risk could be. A lot of people work outdoors, they're up early, they're out working on the roads, they're working on construction sites, even healthy adults who just like to go for a run. They are at greater risk on high ozone days. Again, for the same reason as kids, they're out there, they're more exposed to the pollution. And they are taking in greater volumes of that polluted air than those of us who work in a nice air conditioned office or are in our homes. So what are the health effects? We've already talked about who the most at risk for the health effects are ozone can be respiratory harm again, going back to those people who have a pre existing respiratory condition, potential or potential heart disease or smoke, heart disease or stroke, a likely cause of premature death, damage to central nervous system, increased risk of low birth weight. I think just to put it very simply, what ozone is is when those ingredients as the doctor described combine and cook the way she said, they form a chemical reaction. And when you breathe that in, it can cause your lungs to get very inflamed and cause coughing and wheezing. And I don't know how many of you were told put your sunscreen on when you're a kid because all you need is one or two bad sunburns to increase your risk of skin cancer. Well, it's the same with ozone. If you can have only a very minimal amount of bad exposure to ozone, and it can change the tissue, the lung tissue all the way down to the molecular level and increase your risk of lung diseases and potentially cardiovascular disease as well. So again, coughing, wheezing, decreased lung function, you might find on a high ozone day that you can't walk as quickly outside, you can't get up those steps as quickly. Again, if you're a runner, an outdoor exerciser, you find yourself running out of breath gasping coughing earlier than on a nice crisp fall or spring day, asthma attacks, it could potentially lead to the onset of asthma for somebody with precondition toward asthma, hospital admissions, emergency admissions. We have data from some of the hospitals in Milwaukee that show on high ozone days, there are greater numbers of respiratory admissions to the hospital, greater numbers of respiratory visits to the emergency department on those high ozone days. And as I said, also possibly new onset of asthma for some people. Research also shows increased heart rate that can lead to cardiovascular disease, stroke, biomarkers of inflammation. That's the inflammation that I was talking about within the lungs, the inside of your lungs get sun burned like your skin does when you're out in the out in the sunlight, and systemic stress. These are all the results of exposure to ozone. Mention both of these exposure can can harm elderly can harm newborns as well in a variety of functions, premature cause of death. But all of the progress that the previous speaker mentioned, all of the cleanup that has occurred has had benefits. It's had financial benefits. It's had health benefits. You can see that there have been numerous and these are Wisconsin stats. No, I'm sorry, these are national stats. They've avoided anywhere up to 660 premature deaths, prevented asthma attacks in school children, prevented days that kids would otherwise have not been in school, missed work days, emergency department visits, cases of acute bronchitis. We can all attribute that based on the scientific studies in the models to the progress that's already been made by the Clean Air Act and the cleanup of ozone throughout the past couple of decades. And I just wanted to close with with one particular stat that kind of goes along that you can't talk about health effects without talking about health care costs because they're directly correlated estimates when in 2015 when the latest ozone standard was put out by the EPA. The EPA did a health risk and exposure assessment. It used peer review modeled models and access to cost benefit analysis and came up with a savings of just since since the beginning of the Clean Air Act that the country saw a health care savings of a minimum of $2.6 billion just due to the progress that's been made in reducing ozone. And that's pretty much what I am. Thank you very much for your time. Dane Czekolinski. Dane Czekolinski is director of the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit private public partnership that spearheads efforts to improve the long term prosperity of the businesses, residents and communities of Sheboygan County through collaborative retention, expansion and attraction of businesses and workers. A certified economic development finance professional, Mr. Czekolinski earned a master of public administration degree from Northern Illinois University after receiving his bachelor's degree from UW Whitewater where he earned his way through college by serving in the U.S. Army Reserves. He served in Afghanistan and the Army Corps of Engineers where he rose to the rank of sergeant while constructing airport tarmacs, warehousing facilities, generator shelters and maintenance garages. A native of Neosha, Wisconsin, he lives in Sheboygan with his wife and children and an Australian cattle dog. He enjoys fishing and camping and prefers places where there's no cell phone reception. Please welcome, please welcome Dane Czekolinski. Thank you. Thank you. I'm wondering. I know but I just don't want to be tied down to a lecture. Can I already hear me? I guess we'll just, no, I think. Hello. Oh, perfect. Perfect. Well, thank you for that introduction and certainly thank you for your time and thank you for having me. Again, my name is Dane Czekolinski. I'm the director of the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation. We are a nonprofit devoted to the sole purpose of trying to grow our local economy. And ultimately we do that by focusing on business services, one-on-one things as such as business plans, helping firms find sites, workforce development. And this issue of non-attainment is something we've been very keen to, although I have to give a special shout out to the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce. Jane Brehle is in the audience. They have done the bulk of the heavy lifting for the business community on this issue. And really this issue boils down to a couple things in terms of economic development. The first thing is, is that we all want cleaner air. There is no doubt there. The question becomes, is what's fair? What's reasonable? And how do we make that happen? And one of the things consistently cited in the DNR reports is that they feel that 87% of the air pollution or air quality that is measured at Andre Kohler is from out of state. It's not from Sheboygan County. So this is what's happening. And it's very, very simple. Is that essentially the EPA DNR have cited air quality monitors across the state, roughly one in every county. The one in Sheboygan County was placed at Andre Kohler for the Pacific Purpose of measuring pollution over Lake Michigan. It was not cited there to measure what is coming out of Sheboygan County. And as a result of that decision is that the standards that our companies and residents are held to is based on the standards measured at a monitor that the EPA itself says that it does not accurately reflect what's coming out of here, it reflects what's happening over the lake. And so what does that mean? Now, what that boils down to is that the EPA has essentially, they won't come right out and say it, but they admit it, they've alluded to the fact that Sheboygan County could shut down. All of us could move out of our homes, move to another part of the state, move to another part of the country or the world. We could shut down every factory, no one would ever cut it long again, no one would ever get in a car again, that interstate could never be driven again, and we would still be non-attainment. There is nothing locally we can do short of federal legislation change to accurately reflect that we be held accountable to our own air pollutants, that we are dumping it, that we are contributing to locally. So if the intent is to reduce emissions, and if the intent is to reduce ozone over Lake Michigan, and why does it make sense to hold companies in one geographical area to a higher standard than the known pollutant sources further to our self? It makes no sense. If your goal is to reduce emissions, the goal should be to reduce emissions where those emissions are happening. And so that's really kind of the catch 22 that we find ourselves in as residents and businesses of Sheboygan County. So what does that mean? There's a couple impacts economically to individuals as well as businesses, first the individuals. The first thing that many of you may realize that we are the last, pretty much the last county in the state of Wisconsin that has to do vehicle emissions testing, right? So that's a cost each one of you bear. Yes, it's 15 quick minutes, you jump into any quick change oil, you know, and they check it. And short of your car has a major issue, a sensor issue, or a check engine light, you're fine. Now, the challenge with this is that even though Sheboygan County, it has the lowest poverty level in the United States. But of course, poverty level is one measure. The other one is if anyone served the Alice report, but put up by the United Way, basically what that report says is they believe somewhere around 45, 46% of the population is essentially at extreme risk of living paycheck to paycheck. So having a remission says if you have a check engine light, I know who owns the older cars. The wealthy are the not so wealthy. Now, who's likely to have check engine light? Who's likely to have less time and less resources to fix their car? So in essence, it's a little bit regressive in that standpoint. Now, if we go to this higher ozone standard, the way it's done is there's a tier system. And the longer you remain in non attainment, the higher in that tier system you go. Essentially, it becomes more and more restrictive and what an area can do. We are at risk of entering the next tier in the next year. Now, if that happens, now we go to reformulated gasoline. Essentially, gasoline that burns cleaner. I would argue that's probably not the worst thing. But again, Sheboygan County would be the only county in the state pretty much require one of the few counties in the state pretty much required to do that. What that means is another 15 cents of the gas pump for every person in the area amounts to the average gas consumption of a fam of a vehicle is probably about $100 worth every year. Again, to most of us, $100 extra $100 a year is a small price to pay. But again, remember, that's regressive. It's going to hit certain people more than others. On the business side, the impacts are much more significant than the individual in a couple of different ways. First one is access to talent. We have had stories of people looking at moving to Sheboygan County. Those of you know, we have 3,000 open jobs. This area has done very well for itself. Our medium wage, our number of workforce growth has basically outpaced Madison in the last year. I mean, you're probably sitting at ground zero, the fastest growing community in the state of Wisconsin right now. But the problem is we still need more people to move into the area to fill our roles. And those areas are becoming much more technical. We have had instances of people looking to move here, checking the air quality standards as part of their due diligence, finding out we're rated an F, and basically have decided not to move as a result. So in terms of the quality of life factors, again, why do we do economic development so that we can all live a better quality of life? Because as long as we're making income, there's opportunity. That's how we fund basically the world around us. The more significant impacts are really in money and time, and probably from a couple of different standpoints. So for example, we live in a highly manufacturing community. We're in sit and by some measures the fourth or third heaviest concentration of manufacturing in the nation, both durable and non-durable goods. Manufacturing in today's world runs on a just-in-time system. Everything is made to order and things need to be done quickly. If a company is quoting on significant new businesses, they're quoting with companies around the country, some have to abide by air quality standards and some don't. Some in other countries don't have to. Where this kicks in is what happens when a significant change in a plant needs to occur. And so when a company goes and makes an order, the customers say, all right, in six months we want those first units delivered or in a year. Now, some companies, if they had to abide by these standards, cannot make that deadline. So for example, some companies have shared with us that the time period it takes to get an air quality permit here is roughly three months versus essentially a week or two at and if they work for basically an identical company outside a non-attainment. So already when companies here are bidding on on contracts and time frames they're already three months behind schedule. Which means that puts their ability to compete for work at an extreme disadvantage. The next thing is money. One of the companies have been very, very open about this and that's Plymouth, Fulmin Plymouth. They estimate that they spend $300,000 a year in compliance and paperwork just to run their operations. Put that in perspective of a company that's basically right across line in Fond du Lac that basically doesn't have to do any of it. And even though they're doing almost the exact same work, the exact same thing, one company is $300,000 in the whole and three months behind schedule every time they want to increase their customer base. It's essentially what's happening. The last thing is that we've also heard a situation. Now this might be an outlier but still true nonetheless. Is that from the regulatory side the EPA went to a local company and told them they had basically a chemical-style company. I won't share who they are, but told them they had to reformulate the way they make their product. And that would cost them another 20-30% in final costs. The company took the EPA to federal court and won. And the EPA was quite frankly overstepping its bounds and trying to scare a company into doing something different. That has happened where there are some tools and mechanisms that could be exploited. Again, I believe it's an outlier in this situation. But nonetheless, if you're a company facing basically an EPA coming at you telling you to stop or change your operations and putting your price point 20% above your on top of your competition, that company is not going to be along for very, very long. And so kind of the biggest thing is, you know, I've heard it called no growth zones. And I can tell you that in our personal experience is if a company is looking at citing a factory or facility here, we're usually involved. And one of the first questions, if I know it's larger site, almost one of my first questions I'll ask is, does it matter if we are a non attainment zone? And I would say 90% of the time they say yes, you guys are and they look puzzled. I say, yes, we're not attainment. We're not interested in thank you. And so I can tell you that this has had a direct impact in our ability to compete for additional companies. But I think more significantly than that are existing companies. We know that companies are choosing to locate or expand outside in our area for a partial reason of our non attainment status. Now I'm a firm believer that if there's just one major issue of a company, they usually work on fixing that to okay, maybe they'll continue working that was starting three or four issues workforce, non attainment, logistic supply chain, suddenly a plant outside the area starts looking more and more favorable. So I guess I think I'm being red carded out here. And I just I what I just wanted to say is from an economic development perspective, the economy, the beating heart of how we pay for our goods, how we pay for our services, how we take care, how we pay for college, all of it is based on how well we can compete in a global marketplace, all of it. And we are being punished for something that the EPA themselves have basically admitted. You can't do anything about it. There's nothing we can do about it. Either you got to make federal legislation, or you're just gonna have to bite the bullet and deal with it. And so that is it's really an issue of fairness from an economic development perspective. So thank you. Thank you. Seth Hofmeister is field director with the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters, a nonprofit, non partisan organization dedicated to electing conservation leaders and encouraging lawmakers to support policies that protect Wisconsin's health and natural resources. As field director, Mr. Hofmeister leads a team of field organizers and works with volunteers, activists and partner organizations in communities across Wisconsin to draw attention to conservation issues and hold elected officials accountable. He's a graduate of UW-Stevens Point where he was student body president and chair of the campus chapter of the Wisconsin public interest research group. He currently resides in Green Bay. Please welcome Seth Hofmeister. Thank you so much for having me here and go pointers. It's really great to be here to talk about this issue. You know, as it was mentioned, Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters works on issues like this all across the state. I come from our Green Bay office, but we have offices all across Wisconsin. In Madison, we have a lobbyist. We have folks in Milwaukee. We have folks in Eau Claire and we're able to work on a lot of these issues that deal with clean air, water pollution and protecting our public lands. So to say the least, we've been busy for the last few years, but this is this is one of the issues that really brought us back into dealing with air pollution. And it's a pretty straightforward. The bill in our eyes, so you might not even have to red card me. We'll see. But I guess let's establish the background here. So I agree with Dane. We definitely all want clean air. So the station has been a part of a regional effort to manage ozone pollution in Lake Michigan. It's a very highly important site, as we've heard. And it's doing a really crucial, crucial task of monitoring ozone pollution. So we already heard about what ozone pollution is. It's going to put folks that have asthma and the Zima chronic bronchitis at risk. So when we look at these already vulnerable people, ozone can be a major thing. And this monitor was placed here, not just so it could, I guess, just monitor the air quality in Sheboygan, but a monitor Lake Michigan. So it was very strategically placed here to serve a greater purpose. So let's look at Senate Bill 466. We have some senators, LaMayhew, Strobel and WAN Guard that introduced it. And the basic premise of this bill is to eliminate the collection of air quality data at Core Andre State Park. This was introduced some time last year. So we have all those different air monitors across the state, as we've seen, across the region, as we have seen. And they do an important job of painting a large picture of what air pollution is all across in the West for folks that all breathe air. But this particular monitor was showing, you know, they were getting red carded a little bit, too. There was some not very good data coming out of there indicating very high levels of pollution. So this bill was introduced in response to that unhealthy level of air pollution. So in my eyes, a great conservation champion would see that and figure out how we can reduce air pollution. That to me would be a great idea. And, you know, I see some potential candidates, you know, some elected officials, representatives of elected officials. I think that that would be a very reasonable thing to deal with this. Unfortunately, this bill is a little bit misguided for for a few different reasons. So the intent of this bill is to not include this evidence. So it's not going to deal with the actual air pollution. But what it's going to do is it's going to hide the evidence of the air pollution that we have seen is there. And it's going to artificially show compliance with the federal clean air act standards. And it's potentially going to allow for more pollution in the area. So when we talk about pollution, you know, I live in Green Bay, so I vote in Green Bay. I'm a Wisconsin resident, I'm a Packer fan. But pollution, air pollution, water pollution doesn't know political boundaries. It doesn't know, I mean, it doesn't know manmade instituted boundaries. It just is. So when you have a monitor that's testing for air pollution at a given location, it really is irrelevant where the pollution is coming from because the pollution at that air monitor is indicating that there is pollution. So when we talk about the no growth and the unfair penalization, it's kind of just a little bit of smoke and mirrors. Essentially, we're trying to falsify data to be in compliance with this. So that's I mean, that's incredibly problematic. If the bottom line, I mean, I'm not going to have to take very much time to talk because the bottom line is if it's showing pollution, people there are affected. But I think what's more problematic about this is the overreach that our state legislators that authored this are demonstrating by this. Typically, when we look at things like air pollution, it's decided by the DNR, it's decided by the EPA, and I'm not talking about the political appointees, the Peruits and the Cathy steps, I'm talking about the scientists that they've systematically defunded and dismantled. So while those folks are no longer there and they don't have jobs or they're being overstretched, they're also taking their purview is getting taken away. Legislators are forbidding placement of these given air monitors and they're overstepping and they're politicizing public health. The legislature should not be intervening to make sure it is harder to regulate public health. The legislature should only be intervening if they're making it easier to protect people. We did see a few different and but instead we're making it easier for folks to get exposed to pollution. We did see a few different amendments to this this bill but the amendments don't really change the intent of it. The amendments still made the bill what it is and that is it's falsifying data to send to the EPA so we can ignore our pollution problem. To kind of put things into perspective to there was another bill introduced around the same time which is luckily irrelevant because it didn't pass but that was Assembly Bill 587 and Senate Bill 459. Again this is introduced by LeMayhew and Strobel and Wangard and you know friends like Adam Jarko and Andre Jacques were also cosponsors on the assembly side but what these same group of legislators wanted to do in that same set of overreach they wanted to remove air pollution standards not required by the federal government. So anything completely specific to Wisconsin that the federal government didn't regulate they wanted to completely get rid of and completely wipe the slate clean every 10 years. So if we did start to rebuild some of these policies every 10 years the slate would be wiped clean again and these laws take four to five years to implement in the first place. So luckily that bill didn't pass but Senate Bill 466 is still incredibly problematic for the two reasons that I outlined and you know the bottom line doesn't matter where the pollution is coming from. Folks here in Sheboygan County and all across the area are going to be exposed to ozone and while I think that we all agree we need clean air we need to do something about it falsifying the data is not the most scientific and ethical thing that we can do to prevent that. So I guess that's that's pretty much the extent of my remarks here. Sarah Gears is staff attorney at Midwest Environmental Advocates a nonprofit nonpartisan environmental law center that supports people working for healthy air land water and government. She earned her bachelor degrees in conservation and environmental science and Spanish from UW Milwaukee and her law degree from the University of Wisconsin. She interned with the Wisconsin Department of Justice Environmental Protection Unit and clerked for Justice and Patrick Crooks on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Ms. Gears enjoys backpacking, climbing and kayaking. She volunteers for the Dane County Humane Society. Please welcome Sarah Gears. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the League of Women Voters for inviting me to speak and thank you all for coming out to listen and learn a little bit more about ozone pollution and what I'm going to talk a little bit about, which is how the law, the Clean Air Act, is meant to improve air quality and protect public health. There we are. So I'm going to start with an overview of some aspects of the Clean Air Act that I'll cover tonight, which we're going to delve into in a little more detail later on. First, the purpose of the Clean Air Act is to protect and enhance air quality so as to promote public health and welfare. So that is kind of the guiding principle on which EPA uses when it sets the air quality standards, some of which we're talking about tonight. Like the ozone air quality standard that due to increased knowledge over time, the EPA has lowered because even those lower concentrations of ozone can have impacts on sensitive populations like Donna was talking about. The Clean Air Act is protects and improves air quality in several ways. So one of those ways is that the US EPA sets these air quality standards based on the amount of air contamination that can be in the air and still be healthy for people to breathe. It also requires significant sources of air pollution to obtain air pollution permits and to limit their emissions of pollutants of concern. It also requires states to monitor air pollution and requires states and EPA to work together to designate areas as either in attainment of air standards or not in attainment. And that's really what we're focused on tonight. So I talked a little bit about both the federal EPA and the state and both of them serve important roles in implementing the Clean Air Act. So at the federal level, it's administered by the US EPA. They set air quality standards and they also serve an important oversight role for states that have chosen to implement their own permitting and air quality program like Wisconsin. So the Wisconsin DNR developed a state program to issue permits and regulate sources of air pollution. And EPA is the one that oversees that and also decides ultimately whether or not areas of the state will be designated in attainment or non-attainment following the state's recommendation. So we've already heard a lot about how ozone is created. We heard about the ozone precursors, which are nitrogen oxides and VOCs. And also that it requires this process of creating ozone requires heat and sunlight, which will be relevant to some of the regulations later on, which focus on reducing those sources of emissions, nitrogen oxides and VOCs during the summer months when we're most concerned about higher levels of ozone. We also heard about the ratcheting down of the ozone air quality standard over time. And the last standard in 2008 was 75 parts per billion. And recently in 2015, the health-based air standard was reduced to 20 parts per billion. 70. 70, thank you. Oh, everyone's on top of that. So when the EPA updated the air standard in 2015, that triggered a requirement for EPA and for states to look at whether or not areas all around the country were in attainment with this new air standard. So it was not just Wisconsin or Sheboygan that EPA was looking at to redesignate or to take a new look at whether or not they were in compliance with this air standard. The Clean Air Act has certain time requirements within which EPA has to act. The Clean Air Act requires EPA to set or to designate an area as non-attainment if an approved air monitor registers an exceedance of an air quality standard. So that's an important thing that I want to highlight is that the Clean Air Act requires if you have a monitor that is not meeting an air standard, the EPA has to designate an area around that monitor as non-attainment. And so what was in dispute between DNR and EPA was what was going to be the area around the Kohler-Andree monitor that they were going to designate as in non-attainment. And EPA has some discretion because the standard for that is the EPA is supposed to determine what area around that monitor is contributing to the exceedance of the air quality standard. And we've heard a lot about the complications of determining where the ozone precursors are coming from over time and also that a lot of those emissions of those precursors are coming from out of state. But certainly in designating an area along the shoreline of Sheboygan as in non-attainment, EPA determined that that area was also contributing to the exceedance of the air quality standard at the Kohler-Andree monitor. So now we're gonna delve into a little bit more detail about the ozone air quality issues in Sheboygan and then this non-attainment designation. So this is a graph that is almost useless because you can't read what's going on except just generally what it is meant to show is that the results that EPA used from air quality monitors all around the state, the sort of values that Donna was talking in more detail about how the state determines what those values are. But averaged over three years, DNR and EPA come up with a value of what the air quality is at a certain monitor. The Kohler-Andree monitor is the blue bar kind of further along the right that is over the red line. I could just use my cursor and show you. Is this bar right here? And the value is 79 parts per billion that was measured at that air quality monitor. As a reminder, the air standard is 70 parts per billion. I'd also note that the bar immediately to the left, the bar immediately to the left reads 69 parts per billion which is just below the air quality standard. And I'll touch back on that but that's relevant because if that other air monitor which we're gonna continue to use now even if this legislation continues in effect and we don't use the Kohler-Andree monitor, that's pretty close to the air standard and by lowering the requirements for sources of emission, not only in Sheboygan but in other parts of Southeast Wisconsin, it's possible even likely that that is then gonna be exceeded the next time we take a new look at whether or not Sheboygan is an attainment or non-attainment. So a little bit about the ozone, kind of the history of the ozone air quality in Sheboygan. Ozone pollution in Sheboygan in Southeast Wisconsin is not a new problem. We started regulating ozone and air quality back in the 1970s and Sheboygan has been in non-attainment of the ozone standard since around 1979 with a brief period of attainment during 1996 and then back in non-attainment as EPA made the standard more stringent. And even though we've heard that some of the ozone pollution comes from other states, the Clean Air Act only takes that into account to a certain extent. I talked a little bit about that, how the core determination that EPA makes is based on whether or not a monitor reads an exceedance of an air quality standard. For the most recent designation, Wisconsin initially requested an area with a geographic extent of about 2.9 miles from the Lakeshore. So as you can see, it's a little bit difficult to see but the current non-attainment designation is in blue along the shoreline of Sheboygan. And that is the EPA designated non-attainment area which is the boundary of which is about 2.3 miles inland from the Lakeshore. On a related note, as some of you may have read, EPA initially proposed to designate all of Sheboygan County and most of Southeast Wisconsin is non-attainment and then ultimately decided to roll that back significantly. So we've talked a great deal about this already but just a few more points about the air quality monitors. The two air quality monitors that the state and EPA use to determine the air quality in Sheboygan are the Haven Monitor which is the green dot a little bit to the west of the non-attainment boundary line and then the Kohler-Andrea Monitor which is in red right along the Lakeshore. As Seth talked about in some detail, there was recent legislation that is going to eliminate the Kohler-Andrea Monitor from the data gathering that DNR and EPA used to determine whether the area is in compliance with the air standard. That was just signed this year so that air quality monitor is still part of the monitoring network for 2018. Based on this legislation, DNR has to remove it from its air quality monitoring program the next year but and I mentioned that because there is still time for us to make a change as a state if we decide that we don't want to take this step and eliminate this data set from our air quality monitoring picture. So we've heard a little bit about this from various folks but I just want to highlight why non-attainment designation matters. And Dane talked a little bit about some of the concern from industry about the more stringent emission standards that large industries have to comply with and that is an aspect of the non-designation or the non-attainment designation. Industries, very large industries if they have a significant expansion or if a new industry is coming into play then they do have to install more protective emission controls. A few other, another aspect of that is controlling emissions from vehicles and also developing an implementation plan to demonstrate how the state is going to achieve compliance with the air standard in this area. Very quickly if I can talk about the cross-state air pollution rule, is that okay? A minute, one minute. Yes, I have one more slide left. Okay, I wanted to mention the cross-state air pollution rule which is a regulation that EPA recently developed to get at this issue of states contributing to other states air pollution problems because this isn't a unique problem to Sheboygan. So all of the states that are in yellow are subject to this cross-state air pollution rule and basically what it says is if you're one of these yellow states and you are contributing to another state's non-attainment designation for ozone, then you have to be put on a budget of how much of these ozone precursors you can emit. Particularly relevant is that an ironic impact of changing the non-attainment designation for some of southeastern Wisconsin is that other upwind states may be able to emit more ozone precursors because their budget might change because we're no longer designated as non-attainment. So with that, I am going to say thank you all for coming and listening and I look forward to your questions. So now is the time for our 30-minute question and answer period and it's going to be strictly adhered to because we even got a dispensation. This is summer hours and the library is allowing us to be here. So we're going to have to be on our way at about 7.35, wrapping things up. 7.35. Okay, okay, okay. So Kristen is bringing up the questions. Two committee members have been sorting through the submitted questions and we will address as many as we are able before we conclude. Okay. All right. And this is open to everyone at this point. There's no one's name is on here. Then it'll say anything. Okay. So if the Kohler-Andre monitor is eliminated, how can we measure transport across states? So I understand the intent of the bill is to shut down the monitor or maybe they intend to keep running it. I don't know. My understanding is that the clean, and maybe Sarah knows this, that the Clean Air Act, or at least it is EPA, federal EPA policy, that they do not allow states to shut down monitors. If they are within 80% of the NACs, that ambient air quality standard, let alone they are never, no state is allowed to shut down a state that's in, a monitor that's in non-attainment. So I mean, yes, we have other monitors, but, you know, people go to the beach, right? The Haven monitor is not on the beach. It's not measuring exposures at the beach. That's important data. Okay. This is directed to Dane and Sarah. Multiple studies like the EPA's peer reviewed 2011 study found that environmental costs amount to less than 1% of the $4.74 trillion value, trillion dollar value of the manufactured goods that U.S. companies shipped. Air pollution control is responsible for less than half of this percentage. Clean Air attracts workers and local customers to a community and results in 13 million fewer missed days of work. So why is regulation necessary to compel businesses to make these sound investments? So what you're asking is that if the cost of the overall industry is less than 1% what is the major concern? Correct? Did I paraphrase that properly? Now I guess my ultimate question would be is, I'm not familiar with the number of manufacturers in attainment versus non-attainment zones across the United States. I can ask you the way that the investment systems ultimately run is that we are always pre-programmed to take the highest return on investment. That is why products come in from China. That is why we see global competition. That is why we see when Europe rebuilt itself and Southeastern Asia rebuilt itself after World War II we saw goods and services starting to flow in from those economies because we could buy it at the shelf for a penny or two less at that cost. That is what Walmart built its business on. Now that is essentially the ultimate reason is that to most customers the end price is what they see. What they don't always see is the corporate responsibility that goes into those products and into those services. If most of us knew what conditions some of our electronics were being produced in overseas we would probably stop buying them. But we don't see that. And so what I would say is that if we could adequately market that environmental stewardship and with the pricing and consumers would react I do believe that would be a very great idea but right now when a half of the US population basically lives paycheck to paycheck has no savings for retirement I would argue that every penny counts to the individual. Now from a social standpoint and the overall costs and how do we make our environment cleaner? How do we make our air cleaner? How do we reduce the number of sick days both in the air quality as well as our national healthcare system which all of you know I'm pretty sure is in very ill repute right now that these are significant challenges and because all these costs are mounting up we're pre-wired to almost shop for the cheapest thing every time. So I think it's a big deal from the individual investment decision when you take 3,000 people voting 300 million people voting with their wallets in the US markets alone that adds up to significant local economic impact. If every person decided to stop buying a good cheese for example that's made in even though I don't think the food industry contributes a lot to VOCs if everyone decided to buy cheese not made in Wisconsin to this area that represents a $5 billion industry and thousands of local jobs that we all rely on our neighbors and so even though that the 1% is a huge impact to that one company that stopped selling the product it's everything and it's everything for the town that that happens to. Sarah, did you have anything you'd like to say? I'm concerning that one, okay. Sorry. I'm not an economist so my comments will be pretty brief but I think what this question gets at is the importance of quantifying the economic benefits of environmental regulations and our environmental laws in order to defend, maintain and strengthen them. I think the flip side of some of Dane's comments are the economic costs of missed days of work because of a child's asthma attack, lower productivity, higher health care costs when you have to have emergency room visits all of those things are lowered when you have better air quality. Okay, this question is directed to Donna Wyninski. When EPA allows levels of ozone pollution that science shows causes health effects businesses and manufacturers save money on their operations but who pays the cost of increased public health needs? The one word to answer to that is everyone. Whether you have your own private insurance whether you have your insurance through the Affordable Care Act Exchange whether you are on Badger Care or one of the other state sponsored programs in some capacity or another we are all paying for each other. We are paying for those who are on the more publicly funded programs we are paying for those programs and those people's health care through increased tax dollars. Even within our own private structure we are paying for them through the higher premiums the higher out-of-pocket co-pays. I mean we were just talking about escalating health care costs and it is it's a huge impact on the overall economic picture again like Heather is it sorry? Sarah. Sarah sorry like I'm not an economist either but when somebody is working a minimum wage job or a $10 an hour job they're a single parent and their child has an asthma attack and they don't have paid time off and they have to take that time to go to the emergency department and they miss work they miss pay that all has an economic impact but again just to summarize we are all paying for the cost of health care regardless of what the source is. Okay here's a question. Can you rank top to bottom the largest point source of VOC immersion in the county? Emission. Oh emission I'm sorry it's this. Yes. So I don't have the answer to that memorized. I can tell you that on DNR's website from their last year's non-attainment plan for ozone they do list all of the sources of both nitrogen oxides and VOC's emissions in the county and they rank them. So if you want that information it's on DNR's website in a very large PDF document. Anyone else? Okay what technologies are available for us collectively to switch to in order to reduce NOX and VOCs? Try to address that. I'm taking that means on a personal level so to reduce NOX our vehicles are a big source of NOX the primary source of NOX now used to be stationary sources power plants et cetera but now mobile and off-road sources have due to the controls that have brought down ozone on stationary power plants et cetera. Now mobile sources are the biggest source of NOX so by a clean car, by a low emission vehicle drive fewer miles take public transportation that will all of those measures will reduce your footprint for both NOX and VOC's. With respect to VOC's, other sources of VOC's are surprisingly consumer products, your laundry detergent, your those heavily scented fabric softeners, your shampoos, your hair sprays, your deodorants, anything that smells, almost anything that smells sweet and fruity and flowery is a VOC is going to be wafting after you have smelled its lovely fragrance. It's going to go out the window and if conditions are right it will react and form ozone or VOC stands for volatile organic compound. So it's a class of chemical compounds that have carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Okay this is a question for Seth. Why don't all the counties along the lakeshore have the non-attainment designation if most ozone pollution follows the shoreline and is originating via emissions from commercial shipping on the Great Lakes and land sources in Illinois and Indiana? I think that goes back to the data that we do have available. I mean the premise of this bill was to reduce the amount of data that we have to inform the decisions about the non-attainment and the one that they do have is showing very high results. So to make a more science based and a more fair and equitable decision about where to put these non-attainment zones we should if anything be having more air monitoring sites so we can precisely pinpoint these locations rather than by completely oversimplifying things. Didn't they just get a waiver for the scene county? Yes so our friends Foxconn who are moving to the state have been getting all sorts of waivers for air quality which I'm sure if we wanna talk about potential sources that we'll be showing up here that might be a big one but not only has our government given Foxconn waivers for air but they've given them waivers for the Great Lakes Compact. And Sarah can probably talk a little bit more about some of that as well. Okay this one is for Dane. Businesses in Sheboygan County have enjoyed higher profits each year since 2016. How does that fit in with the statement that companies are choosing not to locate in our county due to its F rating? I'm not sure where the data's coming from from higher profits. I think that might be a gross over simplifications as a matter of fact very few of our companies are publicly traded and that data simply isn't available. So I don't know where that perception is. I can tell you that right now every year that goes on we lose three manufacturers from our county like clockwork. We have fewer people employed today than we did in 2007. So I would not say that Sheboygan's economy is a crapshoot for anyone who wants to locate here let alone place additional burdens on them that their competitors 30 miles away don't have to deal with. This is one for Donna Wodinski. How is Sheboygan County informing residents that ozone is a health hazard? And how is Sheboygan County informing residents that ozone levels are elevated? There's a variety of ways that people can monitor the air on a daily basis. The DNR has a service where you can subscribe to emails where you can get the daily air quality. Most of our weather forecasters now will include air quality information when the ozone is expected to be at levels above the safer federal standards. There's all kinds of apps that you can download onto your phone too when you can get your daily air quality based on your zip code or your county. So there's a variety of sources and I think that's one of the most important points to take away from this, that an informed population is probably a healthier population too so that if you do know that there is going to be an exceedance of the ozone standard in Milwaukee County, for example, there was one called for Labor Day. It was an orange violation, which is unhealthy for sensitive groups. You can plan, you can plan accordingly. Okay, that's on that particular day I'm a runner. I'm gonna do my run early in the morning before the ozone levels build up or later in the evening. I'm going to maybe plan some indoor activities for that particular day rather than being outside as much as I might on a lower ozone day. So it's all key to be, being informed is the key. And I just wanted to add one brief comment about that Senate bill that was passed that says don't use the Colorado Air Monitor anymore. Whether it's included in terms of whether the county is in attainment or not, there's still people living there. There's still people who live within that 2.9 mile radius from the lake. I grew up blocks walking distance from the lake and was exposed to that ozone. Without that monitor, we don't know and you can't make those informed decisions unless you have the information. Okay, this one is for Sarah. Some counties in southeastern Wisconsin also had their non-attainment designation removed by the EPA. Is there a concern that additional ozone produced by Foxconn will impact our county designation as well as the new narrow lakeshore non-attainment area? And what's to stop more businesses from requesting the same designation exemptions? I'll try to touch on all of those, all parts of that question. So in short, the Foxconn facility does emit some ozone precursors. I don't believe they're the largest source in Racine County, but given that not only Racine, but like we saw with some of the average readings from the Sheboygan County monitors, a lot of air monitors in southeast Wisconsin are pretty close to the new air standard. And so, and it's also, we heard from Donna, sort of a complicated picture about, what sources of emissions can lead to higher ozone levels? So it's a big question mark in terms of the impact that Foxconn will have. I think certainly the Foxconn exemptions that we've seen from our state government are open the door to other companies asking for the same thing. So we'll just have to wait and see and hold our elected officials accountable. Further changes could be coming to Wisconsin air quality protections. There have been requests to the Trump administration for waivers regarding reformulated gasoline and to eliminate vehicle emissions testing. What is the best way for Wisconsin to be proactive in air quality protections in light of a new EPA? Also, does anyone on the panel know why the monitor in Kohler is being shut down? Anyone? What's that? First part of the question, how can we be proactive and make sure this doesn't happen? So we saw, like I mentioned, Senate Bill 466, which closes down this air monitoring site was passed and it was successful and we've seen attack and attack after attack on our regulations that protect people, on our protections. Luckily we had that other bill, Assembly Bill 587 or 459, which would wipe clean all the state level, air quality standards. We saw that defeated, but the best thing that we can do to make sure it doesn't keep happening, because it will keep happening if we don't do anything about it, is to call our elected officials, is to hold them accountable, is to make sure that they know we care about having science-driven policy that protects our public health. And if they're not going to vote to protect the folks that live here, then we have an opportunity in November to do that. The same goes for the federal level. We gotta make sure that we're holding our elected officials accountable at every turn. Every time one of these retroactive bills are introduced, we need to make sure that they know that we do not support them. And again, if they don't support them, then we have an opportunity in this November and then upcoming November is to replace them. One additional comment. One of the most egregious things that we at the Lung Association see going on right now is within the past couple of weeks, is the whole concept of not considering science when making decisions by the EPA. Basically censoring science, giving it less if any weight, and that's the most ludicrous thing from a science-based organization. All of our policies are based on science. And to say that science isn't going to count now, it just blows my mind to think that that would even be proposed by this administration. The Lung Association does have a petition online. I can look up what that is, but that is one way you can, with very, very little effort, make your voice known, saying don't censor science when it comes to air quality and other environmental policies. And I will look that up for anyone who's interested. Well, the person who wrote this question asked, does anyone know why the monitor in Kohler is being shut down? It was me. Yeah, I know it was you, but I'm just. It's on the plans for the 2019 DNR. So there's a monitor in Kohler on Highland Drive that monitors lead, and it just says at the bottom, shut down site. But nobody's heard that before. Oh, does that monitor? Yeah. Oh. I believe it's being shut down because the site has been in attainment, and so there's no problems there, and no reason to suspect that there will be problems. And the lead standard, I know that some sources around there did take measures to clean up their problems, and so it's no longer an issue. This is the last question, and, Dane, this one is to you. What's the average cost of regulations for Sheboygan County industrial manufacturers because they are located in a non-attainment area, let's say, compared to Fond du Lac County? The sources of information that I have on this is the local company implement that spends about $300,000 for their permits and for the consultants to come in and do their paperwork. Compared to their competitors, I probably pay in the tens of thousands of dollar range. So the vast majority of the 300,000 is a delta difference. The bigger thing I think is in time, quite frankly, is that they have to wait three months in order to get approval, even to move a piece of machinery in there, not even installing new, just to move it and to change the way an assembly line is configured, can run them three months in permitting processes where their similar company in Fond du Lac or Oshkosh would not need to go through that. And so for the companies that I, and that is one of the, I forgot what title it is. There's each company based on their emissions is put into different titles, title five. I believe they're one of about six firms in that title five category. And so you could say that there's five other firms that would have to deal with very similar standards. The other one is that that doesn't take and caught the offsets that if need to be created or something significant would happen. They would have to figure out a way to, so the way the county itself emissions stays flat. And so finding those could, again, depending on what they're doing could be significant as well. And so what we've seen companies doing, knowing that you can operate a facility, knowing that 300,000 is cream off the top, right? That's right off of profit. And so if you have to pay $300,000 and you're investing and you own multiple plants across the United States, which one is your next expansion gonna happen on? Keep in mind that the vast majority of economic development growth and decline happens incrementally. It's not a big May lining and picking up moving. Those are actually fairly rare. What we see is 10 jobs here, 12 jobs there, a new assembly line there, a new assembly line here. Whereas the investment happening, it's happening in one to $5 million increments. It's not happening in one plant at a time. And so I think the vast majority of the impacts is stuff that we'll never see outright, you know, very much out in the open. I know we were in conversations with one firm on whether or not they expand their plant here in Sheboygan County or they expand their plant in upstate New York. Well, the area they're in in upstate New York is in attainment. And that was one of the things that they brought up to us. It wasn't the only factor in their decision, but rest assured, I do believe that firm is expanding their New York plant right now and not expanding their Sheboygan County plant in part because of non-attainment. So I don't know if that answered the question, but I believe for all Title V companies, it's in the hundreds of thousands dollar range. Okay. How about we give a hand to our fine panel here? So I'm gonna do the wrap up. It'll just take five minutes. So we have some tips and information to share before we leave. First, know your air quality. Donna mentioned a few of these already, but you can download one of these apps, AirNow, Weatherbug, or AirVisual. There are probably others. You can sign up to receive air quality forecasts via email or cell phone and viral flash. And you can compare air quality of U.S. cities and see local air quality trends at the EPA's Air Compare. A couple actions to take. Please make sure you sign the sign-in sheet so you can get on the environment committee's email list so we can keep you informed. And better yet, please come join our league. Stay engaged with your representatives and remember to be an air quality voter. A couple of upcoming events. The next League of Women Voters Sheboygan County meeting will be here in the loft on Tuesday, July 17th at 6 p.m. Details are on our website. And a couple of us in the Sheboygan County League are also involved in the League of Women Voters Lake Michigan Region League, which works on Lake Michigan Watershed Conservation. And they are sponsoring a public event on June 27th in Chicago called The Fraying of the Environmental Safety Net with keynote speaker Howard Lerner, president and executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. And those handouts are in the back on the table. We also have some other handouts. One I wanna call attention to is our list of resources for this event. Our committee did a lot of homework to educate ourselves about this topic and we wanted to share that with you. Also we have our League membership application and some of our panelists may have brought handouts that are also back there. So tonight's event continues the discussion on this important issue. Please raise your hand if you feel like you learned something from being here. Excellent, we did our job. Thank you all for coming and thank you for your continued engagement. Please remember to turn in your survey and pencils as you exit or you can just leave them on the chair. If you're in a hurry, please just answer the question about how you heard about the event so we can mark it effectively. And a little announcement, the committee is gonna head over to Paradigm after this and will be available if you wanna learn more about the League or you wanna continue this discussion. We'd love to chat with you. And please be mindful that we need to be out of the building by 7.55 but we have a few minutes to chat. So thank you very much.