Kentucky air quality today

From May 1 through September 30, open burning is restricted in eight Kentucky counties: Boone, Boyd, Bullitt, Campbell, Jefferson, Kenton, Oldham, and a small portion of northeastern Lawrence. The Division for Air Quality, in the Energy and Environment Cabinet, sets and enforces the restriction, and it is dated to ozone season rather than to fire risk. The list doubles as a map of where the state’s air problem sits: Boone, Campbell and Kenton across the river from Cincinnati; Jefferson, Oldham and Bullitt around Louisville; Boyd and the corner of Lawrence at the Ashland end. Jefferson County’s restriction runs year-round rather than only through ozone season.

Louisville also runs its own air agency rather than being regulated only from Frankfort. The Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District administers the Strategic Toxic Air Reduction program, adopted by regulation in June 2005 after a joint study of toxic air pollutants around the Rubbertown chemical complex in west Louisville. The district reports emissions of all categories of toxic air contaminants down almost 80 percent since, and about 96 percent for the group that study measured above a one-in-a-million cancer risk. That authority stops at the county line.

South and east of those counties the ground changes. The Cumberland Plateau is narrow valleys and hollows that settle cold air in winter, a landform that behaves nothing like the river corridor the burn rule was written for.