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The American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago is deeply disappointed in President Todd Stroger's decision to veto the Sulfur Dioxide Emission Tax the Cook County Board passed last week by an overwhelming majority.
This tax would have provided a powerful market incentive for reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions in the county, and it would have helped to defray a portion of the health care costs associated with sulfur dioxide pollution that are borne by our county's health care system. Moreover, it would have helped everyone in Cook County breathe easier.
Cook County is a hot spot in the nation's asthma epidemic and an air quality non-attainment zone. That is not a coincidence. Poor air quality is particularly dangerous for people with respiratory illnesses such as asthma. According to recent data, local power plants and other industries emit almost 20,000 tons of sulfur dioxide pollution into our air every year. This occurs even though technology exists to nearly eliminate it. In fact, newly built facilities that emit these toxins have been required to install such pollution control technologies for the past 25 years. Sources that continue emitting harmful levels of sulfur dioxide in Cook County do so simply because it is economically advantageous for them.
The proposed emissions tax ordinance would have expedited the cleanup of our local air pollution by charging companies for the pollution they cause and force the sources of these unhealthy emissions to bear some of the health care costs incurred from the diseases they trigger. Each year, the taxpayers of Cook County spend hundreds of millions of dollars on asthma-related health care costs. Collecting emission-based tax revenue from polluters would have been a win-win for the county.
It is disappointing that the president has exercised his veto power to eliminate this innovative and creative measure even though the Board of Commissioners concluded, by a vote of 10 to 5, that taxing sulfur dioxide emissions is good public policy. His veto of this ordinance is shortsighted. Regulation of these sources has proven ineffective, and this measure would have created a powerful new mechanism for cleaning up our air.