Politics
Advocates Push for Stricter Emissions Standards to Improve Air Quality in Illinois
The Illinois Pollution Control Board took hours of testimony Monday, Dec. 2, 2024, from environmental and other advocates. Here, Melanie Minuche of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization speaks. (Amanda Vinicky / WTTW News)
Illinois regulators are considering adopting a set of standards to improve air quality, such as prohibiting the sale of new gas-powered cars in Illinois come 2035.
“If you can’t breathe, nothing else matters,” said Dr. Juanita Mora, a Chicago physician on the national board of the American Lung Association. “We want clean air for everyone, because it translates into our lungs being open, our children being able to play in playgrounds.”
The Illinois Pollution Control Board took hours of testimony Monday from environmental and other advocates encouraging Illinois to make the state’s standards for car and truck emissions stronger than federal regulations.
Another proposed policy would require that in a decade, half of new trucks sold in Illinois must also be zero emission, while a final proposal calls for tightening tailpipe standards for diesel emissions — a move that relies on manufacturers of diesel engines to make them in a way that produces less nitrogen oxide.
Pollution from cars and trucks causes short- and long-term health problems, Mora said, noting that she sometimes advises children with asthma to avoid playing outside.
“Particulate matter and ozone does a lot of damage, especially to those with pre-existing respiratory diseases such as asthma, CLPD, emphysema,” Mora said. “Breathing this air is very, very bad for children who have developing lungs.”
The policies mirror those already adopted by California, followed in whole or in part by 16 other states, according to California’s air resources board.
Each rule is a take-it-or-leave-it situation for Illinois.
An exemption in the federal Clean Air Act allows only California to adopt stricter regulations. Other states can move to adopt California’s rules or stick with the federal ones.
Illinois advocates began pushing for state regulators to move to the California rules last summer, but their cause has taken on added import and urgency following the election of Donald Trump as the next president.
The president-elect favors a “drill, baby, drill” reliance on fossil fuels, has called for withdrawing the U.S. from policies intended to reduce climate change and has promised to repeal or limit federal tax credits available to consumers who buy or lease certain electric vehicles. That could put EVs out of financial reach for many Americans, which would decrease incentives for manufacturers to produce the vehicles.
“All the more reason why Illinois should adopt a standard that gets us on this clear, clean path for vehicles that’s strong,” said Brian Urbaszewski, environmental health programs director of the Respiratory Health Association. “It gives certainty to the industry, and it prevents us from backsliding, whatever may happen at the federal level.”
The Illinois Pollution Control Board took hours of testimony Monday, Dec. 2, 2024, from environmental and other advocates. (Amanda Vinicky / WTTW News)
Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other leading Democrats say they’re actively researching how Illinois can insulate itself from federal rollbacks under Trump, including potentially bulking up environmental protections.
But whether the Pollution Control Board, with its members appointed by Pritzker, will adopt the ramped-up regulations on car and truck manufacturing is anyone’s guess.
Skeptics question whether California’s approach is right for Illinois, whether Illinois will have enough charging stations to make the EV switch feasible and whether manufacturers will have the appropriate inventory of cars, trucks and buses. Car dealers and other say rather than a mandate, the move to EVs should be driven by consumer demand.
Alec Messina, a former director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency who is now with the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, said the umbrella business organization is closely monitoring the situation.
“We do think adopting a California approach in Illinois is premature, particularly as our state General Assembly has been focused on developing an appropriate low-carbon fuel standard policy that will have a significant impact in decreasing emissions from the transportation sector.”
Lawmakers are in the early stages of debating a system (Senate Bill 1556) that would adopt a “clean transportation standard” through credits that encourage the production of low-emission fuels.
Alex Peimer, 38, is a professor at Northeastern Illinois University who had a lung transplant last year to help with a lifelong struggle with lung function. He said improving air quality has become his life’s mission. Even with a Democrat in the White House, he said, air quality protections aren’t strong enough.
“The key is to advance change when and where you can, and in the United States it’s often at the state level,” Peimer said.
Peimer said he doesn’t buy the narrative that stricter air standards will hinder industry, pointing to job growth in the renewable energy sector.
Other Chicago residents also told Pollution Control Board members they’re counting on the board to act, particularly for the sake of primarily low-income communities and communities of color near warehouses that see frequent truck traffic and nearby highways.
“When I walk to my nearby coffee shop, I smell the diesel exhaust,” said Pilsen resident Lili Scales, a leader with the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition. “When I take my son to the park, we breath in diesel exhaust. When hundreds of kids get let out of school from my neighborhood, they are overburdened by diesel exhaust, either from the school buses they are jumping on, from the CTA buses that they are riding to get home or from the onslaught of traffic pollution from heavy duty trucks. There is no relief.”
The Lung Association in its most recent report, issued in April, gave Cook County an F grade for having high levels of smog.
“The presence of diesel trucks, factories and the constant exposure to polluted air leaves us vulnerable to serious health issues, many of which are preventable,” said Brenda Santoyo Gomez with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. “I have seen families torn apart by the impact of pollution, children who miss school due to chronic asthma, adults who struggle to breathe and work in jobs that exposure them to even more toxins. And this reality is unacceptable.”
LVEJO’s Melanie Minuche said reducing diesel exhaust will also better protect truck drivers and warehouse workers.
“With the growing e-commerce sector, we can only anticipate more industry development in communities that are already heavily burdened by industrial presence,” Minuche said. “The clean vehicle rules increase access to zero emission vehicles, which includes buses, cars and trucks. Increasing access means there will be cleaner vehicles moving through our streets and bringing about direct health benefits to truck drivers and communities along their truck routes.”
Another hearing focused on advocates is scheduled for Tuesday.
Before regulators make a decision, opponents will have their due at a later, yet to be scheduled hearing, likely in later winter or early spring.
Contact Amanda Vinicky: @AmandaVinicky | [email protected]
