News Release

For Immediate Release: April 5, 2006

Contact:  James Joerke, Air Quality Manager, 816/474-4240 or 816/204-1771; or Jody Ladd Craig, Public Affairs Director, jcraig@marc.org or  816/701-8241

Kansas City’s Clean Air Action Plan wins national award

The Kansas City Regional Clean Air Action Plan has been named one of 16 recipients of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 6^th Annual Clean Air Excellence Awards. The award recognizes outstanding performance in the category of Regulatory/Policy Innovation. Other award recipients in the same category are: Eli Lilly and Company, Tippecanoe Laboratories and Indiana Department Environmental Management, Office of Air Quality; and the Port of Seattle Air Quality Program.

The Clean Air Excellence Awards program recognizes and honors outstanding, innovative efforts that make progress in achieving cleaner air. The program was established in 2000 at the recommendation of the Clean Air Act Advisory Committee (CAAAC), a senior-level policy committee that advises EPA on issues related to implementing the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.

The Mid-American Regional Council’s Kansas City Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) is a comprehensive voluntary plan to provide cleaner air for the region’s residents and to maintain ground-level ozone attainment for the metropolitan area. The development of the CAAP began with a 12-member working group, consisting of local elected officials and representatives from business, regulated industries, and environmental and health groups. 

Ed Peterson, chair of the Air Quality Working Group which produced the Clean Air Action Plan, and co-chair of MARC’s Air Quality Forum, which has responsibility for meeting EPA’s air quality standards in the region, went to Washington to accept the award on behalf of the committee and MARC.

Through regularly held public meetings and a half-day regional air quality workshop, the working group developed a variety of voluntary strategies to target point, area, and on- and off-road mobile emissions sources. The highest ranked strategies were modeled to determine their impact on air quality. The work group’s selected strategies formed the CAAP. In March 2005, the CAAP was endorsed by the Board of Directors of the Mid-America Regional Council, Kansas City’s designated metropolitan and air quality planning organization. 

“We are extremely pleased to be included among this year’s award recipients,” said James Joerke, Air Quality Program Manager at MARC. “The Kansas City community worked very hard to identify voluntary strategies that could make a significant impact on the region’s air quality. Many diverse sectors of the community made important contributions to the work and their creativity and commitment really show in the final plan.”

MARC’s Clean Air Action Plan was the only award given in EPA Region 7, which includes the states of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and nine tribal nations. Other award categories recognized excellence in clean air technology, community development, education and outreach, and transportation efficiency innovations.

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