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Falling short of air quality standards

by DAVID COLE/dcole@cdapress.com
| August 21, 2014 9:00 PM

COEUR d'ALENE - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it began a process to designate part of Shoshone County as not meeting an important air quality standard.

Justin Spenillo, an air quality planner for the EPA in Seattle, said Wednesday that wood stove fires and prescribed burns are primarily responsible for excess fine particulate matter pollution in three Silver Valley communities.

The EPA proposes designating areas in and around Pinehurst, Smelterville and Kellogg as failing to meet the annual fine particulate standard. The EPA classifies that as "nonattainment."

In 2012, the EPA changed the annual fine particulate standard from 15 micrograms per cubic meter to 12, Spenillo said in a conference call with reporters.

A three-year average reading was 12.8 at an air-quality monitoring station in Pinehurst, Spenillo said. The readings were captured for 2011 through 2013.

The area proposed for nonattainment is approximately 200 square miles.

Debra Suzuki, a manager for the EPA's air planning unit, said Wednesday there will be opportunities for communities to provide input on the proposed designation.

The agency will announce a 30-day public comment period in the Federal Register. Publication of that announcement is expected at the end of this month.

"The EPA will continue to work closely with the (Idaho Department of Environmental Quality) regarding the appropriate boundary for the area in Idaho," the agency wrote to Idaho Gov. Butch Otter on Tuesday. "The EPA is committed to working with the states and tribes to share the responsibility of reducing (fine particulate matter) air pollution."

The EPA said state officials agree the Silver Valley areas failed to meet the standard.

The state of Idaho will have until the end of October to provide additional information to the EPA before the agency's administrator makes a final area designation in December.

Idaho then has until 2016 to create a plan and until December 2021 to demonstrate improved air quality.

According to the EPA, fine particulate matter pollution poses the greatest human risk because it can work its way deep into the lungs.