Bulletin: Clean Wisconsin Sues EPA

What Happened

On Aug. 1 Clean Wisconsin sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the federal Circuit Court in Washington, D.C., to challenge a Trump Administration decision that fails to reduce unhealthy ozone smog in Wisconsin and other parts of the country.

Smog occurs when pollution emitted by power plants, industrial facilities and vehicles reacts with sunlight to form ozone. Ozone smog harms people with respiratory disease, older adults, children and other vulnerable people. The Clean Air Act requires EPA to designate “nonattainment areas” in counties where air quality fails to meet federal health standards for ozone. The states must then take steps to reduce the amount of ozone smog in the air. On June 4, EPA designated a narrow band of “ozone nonattainment areas” in a few Wisconsin counties along the Lake Michigan shoreline. U.S. EPA also announced its decision that other areas in eastern Wisconsin are not violating  the ozone air quality standards – a decision directly at odds with EPA’s previous position.

The June designations differ significantly from what EPA proposed less than six months earlier, which was its intention to designate all of Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Waukesha and Washington Counties as ozone nonattainment areas. EPA also designated eastern portions of Door, Kenosha, Manitowoc and Sheboygan Counties as ozone nonattainment areas. The Walker administration had pushed back on EPA’s earlier proposal, asking that the entire state be declared in compliance. “This legal challenge builds on our almost 50 years of work to help ensure that everyone in Wisconsin, especially our most vulnerable residents, can breathe clean, healthy air, ” said Clean Wisconsin CEO Mark Redsten.

• Wisconsin’s Department of Tourism awarded the Door County Visitor Bureau’s (DCVB) Welcome Center with a Tourist Information Center (TIC) Grant for $5,000 on July 25, 2018.

The grant is open to nonprofit tourism organizations and serves to reimburse information centers who work to better serve the visitor. In the past year the DCVB’s Welcome Center has been equipped with technology to assist visitors. Some of the new items found in the lobby are monitors to display information, virtual reality headsets, and tablets to capture visitor emails for e-newsletters. The DCVB Welcome Center is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and is staffed in the summer season Monday-Friday 8 am-6 pm and on weekends 9 am-6 pm.

Coming Up

The Jacksonport Farmers Market is held every Tuesday morning at Lakeside Park from 9 am to 1 pm. Special events happening in August are Marybeth Mattson and Beth Chafey-Hon playing on alternate Tuesdays, and Birch Creek will perform Aug 7.

Members of the Arachne Spinners Guild will demonstrate their spinning skills on Aug. 14 and Sept. 11. The Jacksonport Farmers Market celebrates its 10th season this year and is sponsored by the Jacksonport Area Business Association.

A request to approve an emergency order for proposed rules related to deer carcass transportation, deer farm fencing, and chronic wasting disease, and requests to approve scope statements for developing rules related to off-highway motorcycles and to establish an early closure of the ruffed grouse season are among the items the state Natural Resources Board will address when it meets Aug. 8 in Green Bay.

The board will convene at 8:30 am on Wednesday at the Radisson Hotel & Conference Center, 2040 Airport Drive, Green Bay. The board will also consider: a request to deactivate the gypsy moth suppression program; a request to approve management plans for three separate property groups – the Kettle Moraine Waters, the Southern Region Planning Group and the Northern Lake Michigan Coastal Regional Group (which includes Door County); and accepting donations for a new entrance to Heritage Hill State Park and in support of endangered resources activities in wetland habitats among other items. The complete August board agenda is available by searching the DNR website, dnr.wi.gov, for keyword “NRB” and clicking on the button for “view agendas.” The public must pre-register with Laurie Ross, board liaison, to testify at the board meeting. The deadline to register to testify or for the NRB Liaison to receive written comments is 11 am Friday, Aug. 3, 2018.