ST. LOUIS, MO (KMOX) Leaders in St. Charles and Franklin Counties are questioning where air pollution monitors are placed.
The Environmental Protection Agency reclassified the St. Louis region from marginal to a moderate ozone non-attainment area in November of 2022. They attributed the change to pollution coming from vehicles.
County Executive Steve Ehlmann of St. Charles County says the placement of the monitors has him thinking something different.
"We really only had one problem [in the whole region] and that was in St. Charles County," Ehlmann said. "That's the one testing station that didn't meet the standard and the irony is that that testing station is out in the country."
The monitor is right next to the Ameren coal burning electric generation plant.
"What that leads me to believe, and to suspect, is that the problem isn't really coming out of tailpipes on vehicles it's coming out of smokestacks," Ehlmann said.
Presiding Commission Tim Brinker is raising similar concerns in Franklin County where the EPA's monitor is also next to a coal-fired power plant. Brinker said it was placed their to track the particulates out of the plant.
"But in doing so where very few Franklin County residents live comparatively, and very few vehicles are traversing our roads, it's getting a misinterpretation of the real pollutants that exists in our ozone here."
Ehlmann believes it would better serve the people to have monitors on road bridges instead of the country to check for pollution from vehicles.
The American Lung Association released their latest "State of the Air" report which points to vehicles as one of the biggest contributors of pollution.
They gave letter grades to entities inside the EPA's non-attainment zone for the St. Louis region. The lower grades received the highest ozone days last year. Their figures rely on the same monitors Ehlmann and Brinker are concerned with.
Missouri
Jefferson County D
St. Louis City D
St. Louis County F
St. Charles County F
(Franklin County was not listed)
Illinois
Monroe County A
St. Clair County C
Madison County F
As a clearinghouse for Illinois and Missouri ozone monitoring data, the staff at East-West Gateway Council of Governments are poised to come up with the plan to meet the new moderate attainment level.
