MUSCATINE, Iowa - State officials expect to learn later this month whether Muscatine will have 12 months to improve air quality, or advance toward stringent emissions controls.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources in May requested that the Environmental Protection Agency wait one year before declaring Muscatine and Scott counties as nonattainment areas.

A nonattainment area is a geographic designation that includes industries that contribute to higher-than-accepted levels of fine particles in the air near monitors.

The particles increase risks for heart and lung diseases, especially in children.

In Muscatine, the nonattainment area proposed by the DNR around a monitor at Garfield School includes Grain Processing Corp. and Muscatine Power and Water’s generating plant.

But the EPA will make the final determination on the boundaries.

Jim McGraw, environmental program supervisor with DNR’s Air Quality Bureau, said EPA delayed two weeks in mailing out its nonattainment designations until about          Aug. 15.

“In that letter, we expect them to either grant or deny the 12-month delay,” McGraw said Wednesday.

If the extension is granted, state and local groups would work aggressively to lower Muscatine’s three-year average for particles from 36 parts per billion, or microgram, to the acceptable 35 micrograms.

If the delay is not approved, however, and the nonattainment designation moves forward, McGraw said DNR will have 60 days to work with EPA on the area’s boundaries.

“It’s highly unlikely they’ll propose boundaries any smaller than what we’d originally proposed,” he said.

The DNR proposed a boundary area that ranged from Lucas Street in the north to 41st Street South, between the U.S. Highway 61 Bypass to the Mississippi River. But McGraw said EPA could apply the designation to all of Muscatine and Scott counties.

“They take quite a different perspective on things than we do,” McGraw said of EPA decision-makers on the East Coast.

Bill Phelan, president and CEO of the Greater Muscatine Chamber of Commerce & Industry, said any designation “will have a significant impact on our local economy, no matter what size.”

Phelan said local companies care about air quality, but support an extension to improve the data on which the designation is based and to ensure the figures are current.

If a designation is necessary, he said the nonattainment area should be confined to the smallest area possible.

New and expanding industries, both inside and outside the nonattainment area, will have to demonstrate through studies that they will have no impact on air quality, Phelan said.

Industries within the area are already working with DNR to improve particle emissions, he said.

“They don’t have to punish us to make sure we’re working on the problem,” Phelan said.

Reporter contact information

Jennifer Meyer: 563-262-0525

jennifer.meyer@muscatinejournal.com