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Illinois Environmental Protection
Agency
Strategic Plan: FY 2004 - FY 2007
Revised May 1, 2006
Douglas P. Scott, Director
The mission of the Illinois EPA is to protect,
restore, and enhance the quality of air, land and water
resources to benefit current and future generations. |
Priority I.
Enhanced air quality |
Priority II.
Reduced contamination of the land through prevention
and cleanup |
Priority III.
Clean and safe water |
Priority IV.
Good information about environmental conditions
to educate the public and guide use of resources |
Priority V.
Innovative programs that promote economic development
and benefit the environment |
Initiatives |
Initiatives |
Initiatives |
Initiatives |
Initiatives |
- Ensure that all federal and state air quality standards
are being achieved.
- Implement air pollution control strategies to reduce
industrial emissions.
- Reduce emissions from mobile sources (i.e., transportation)
that impact air quality in the State.
- Implement revised vehicle emission test program.
- Participate in Midwest Governors Association Air Initiative.
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- Ensure that hazardous and nonhazardous wastes are managed
in an environmentally sound manner.
- Encourage the recycling and recovery of waste materials.
- Clean up sites with contaminated land and groundwater.
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- Implement programs to sustain beneficial uses of streams,
lakes, and groundwater.
- Ensure that public water supply systems provide water
that is consistently safe to drink.
- Protect and restore Lake Michigan.
- Reduce mercury in the Illinois environment.
- Move from Facility Planning to watershed protection.
- Assist with statewide water quantity planning.
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- Provide improved information on contamination that may
affect well water.
- Improve communications internally and externally.
- Encourage voluntary actions to improve the environment.
- Promote Environmental Equity.
- Implement the "Right-to-Know" law to notify citizens
when contamination in soil or groundwater poses a heath
threat.
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- Support the Governor's Economic Development Plan.
- Promote new "green" activities, especially at schools,
to reduce costs and pollution.
- Maximize use of electronic capabilities.
- Add to the environmental benefits of settlements by using
Supplemental Environmental Projects.
- Facilitate the use of advanced ethanol production technologies.
- Streamline air permits.
- Help livestock producers achieve and maintain compliance
with environmental laws.
- Encourage voluntary actions to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions to improve the environment and the economy.
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Priority I: Enhanced Air Quality
- Initiative 1: Ensure that all federal and state air quality standards
are being achieved.
- Issue permits; conduct inspections, compliance activities,
and air monitoring; and track air quality trends.
- Assess the status of air quality through data collection,
modeling and analysis.
- Initiative 2: Implement air pollution control strategies to reduce
emissions to assist in achieving air quality goals.
- Reduce power plant emissions by establishing requirements
necessary to meet federal and state standards.
- Promote clean coal technologies and encourage the development
of new clean coal energy plants.
- Initiative 3: Reduce emissions from mobile sources (i.e., transportation)
that impact air quality in the State.
- Implement Illinois' Drive Green Initiative to reduce mobile
source emissions:
- Reduce emissions from diesel school buses.
- Educate school administrators and bus drivers about
reducing emissions from diesel school buses.
- Encourage use of pollution control retrofit devices,
construction equipment on IDOT projects, and other
diesel vehicles.
- Promote clean burning alternate fuels.
- Initiative 4: Implement an improved vehicle emission test program
in nonattainment areas.
- Solicit bids and hire a contractor for the new vehicle emissions
test program.
- Coordinate with the Secretary of State to change the motorist
testing notification and enforcement mechanisms.
- Design, develop, implement, and maintain an effective and
efficient vehicle emissions testing program.
- Develop and effective public information program to educate
motorists about changes in the testing program.
- Initiative 5: Participate in Midwest Governors Association Air Initiative.
- Continue dialogue with other states on improving air quality
in the Midwest by reducing emissions from power plants and
other targeted sources.
- Work collectively with other states toward achieving state
and regional air quality goals.
Priority II: Reduced Contamination Of The Land Through Prevention And
Cleanup
- Initiative 6: Ensure that hazardous and nonhazardous wastes are managed
in an environmentally sound manner.
- Review and evaluate permit applications for hazardous, non-hazardous
and special waste management facilities.
- Complete closure of all inactive waste management units.
- Review permitted groundwater monitoring programs, interpret
groundwater standards, and offer assistance concerning impacts
on groundwater.
- Perform compliance inspections at waste generating facilities.
- Initiative 7: Encourage the recycling and recovery of waste materials.
- Oversee a cleanup program for used tires.
- Administer household hazardous waste collection programs
with local governments and waste collections with K-12 schools.
- Seek authority to allow reuse of waste in innovative non-regulated
ways.
- Implement Responsible Ideas for Disposal (RID).
- Initiative 8: Clean up sites with contaminated land and groundwater.
- Investigate, reduce, eliminate, and manage impacts of contaminated
land and contaminated groundwater.
- Provide opportunities for the cleanup and reuse of brownfields.
- Clean up abandoned landfills.
- Pursue insurance recovery for abandoned waste sites; target
sites to be referred to the Attorney General.
- Explore remediation of abandoned schools with environmental
hazards.
- Implement cleanup of Chicago Cluster Sites.
Priority III: Clean And Safe Water
- Initiative 9: Implement programs to sustain beneficial uses of streams,
lakes, and groundwater
- Protect and maintain existing high quality waters.
- Eliminate use impairments in Illinois waters with identified
problems.
- By 2009, reduce listed impairments due to nonpoint source
pollution by 30% in seven watersheds (12HUC size).
- Promote nutrient management practices.
- Work toward science-based standards (nutrients, bacteria,
dissolved oxygen, sulfate) and more accurate use classifications.
- Address non-continuous but recurring pollutant discharges
related to wet weather conditions.
- Develop a permit program for surface-discharging septic systems.
- Continue SRF assistance to communities seeking to achieve
or maintain NPDES compliance.
- Increase awareness of groundwater contamination, non-degradation
standards, wellhead protection, source water protection through
outreach and education
- Initiative 10: Ensure that public water supply systems provide water
that is consistently safe to drink.
- Reduce the population served by community water supplies
with violations of drinking water standards to less than
5% by 2005.
- Work toward enhancing rules for groundwater protection, source
water protection, and wellhead protection areas.
- Target SRF resources to assure compliance with new and existing
drinking water standards.
- Initiative 11: Protect and restore Lake Michigan.
- Maintain the percentage of open shoreline miles in Good condition.
- Assist with remediation of Waukegan Harbor.
- Continue work at contaminated Cluster Sites in Lake Calumet
area.
- Initiative 12: Reduce mercury in the Illinois environment.
- Seek adoption of and implement mercury reduction requirements
from Illinois power plants.
- Implement reduction programs, including capture and disposal
of mercury vehicle switches and mercury thermostat recycling
program.
- Identify and assess current levels of mercury loading to
Illinois water environment and assess trends in fish tissue.
- Initiative 13: Move from Facility Planning to watershed protection.
- Develop 25 TMDLs for waters that fail to meet the uses for
which they have been designated.
- Align IEPA program activities on a watershed basis.
- Pilot a watershed management approach in the Kishwaukee and
Green River watersheds.
- Foster local watershed management planning.
- Initiative 14: Assist with statewide water quantity planning.
- Provide technical assistance to IDNR and regional planning
groups.
- Inform stakeholders of the impacts of water quantity on water
quality and vice versa.
Priority IV: Good Information About Environmental Conditions To Educate
The Public And Guide Use Of Resources
- Initiative 15: Provide improved information on contamination that
may affect well water.
- Conduct outreach with IDPH to encourage well water testing.
- Develop and implement a plan to further enhance outreach
efforts to notify water supply well owners of potential contamination
risks.
- Initiative 16: Improve communications internally and externally.
- Improve user-friendliness and content management of Agency
web site.
- Upgrade and streamline publications.
- Maintain customer service survey for vehicle emissions test
program.
- Initiative 17: Encourage voluntary actions to improve the environment.
- Expand voluntary education and outreach programs that encourage
individual actions to improve air quality in the Chicago
and metro East St. Louis areas.
- Provide environmental education programs for young people.
- Provide grants to support the work of volunteers to monitor
lakes, clean up rivers and lakes, and other environmental
actions.
- Participate in ABCs of Asthma Program.
- Initiative 18: Promote Environmental Equity
- Complete and implement the Environmental Justice public participation
policy.
- Implement internal policy for responding to Environmental
Justice complaints.
- Initiative 19: Implement the "Right-to-Know" law to notify citizens
when contamination in soil or groundwater poses a health threat.
- Identify sites that pose a localized health risk.
- Ensure that the surrounding communities are notified of the
risk and provided information on how to mitigate the risk.
Priority V: Innovative Programs That Promote Economic Development And
Benefit The Environment
- Initiative 20: Support the Governor's Economic Development Plan.
- Provide timely information to DCEO and the Governor's Office
concerning water infrastructure loans and municipal brownfields
grants.
- Participate in the River Edge Redevelopment Initiative pilot
program in Aurora and East St. Louis.
- Initiative 21: Promote new "green" activities, especially at schools,
to reduce costs and pollution.
- Provide energy efficiency and pollution prevention assessments
at schools.
- Provide green procurement and IAQ training.
- Give Clean School Bus grants.
- Fund Green School Coordinators and Green School projects.
- Collect and properly dispose of chemicals from schools.
- Initiative 22: Maximize the use of electronic capabilities
- Replicate the success of the e-DMR in other areas.
- Develop a secure electronic reporting system for NPDES permittees
to report Annual Fiscal Reports and Semi-annual Sludge Management
Reports
- Initiative 23: Add to the environmental benefits of settlements by
using Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs).
- Maintain a "SEP bank" of potential projects with stakeholder
input.
- Fund SEP ideas through appropriate settlements to meet community
environmental needs.
- Initiative 24: Facilitate the use of advanced ethanol production
technologies.
- Create an interagency working group to provide coordinated
assistance to potential ethanol producers.
- Provide information and incentives for new ethanol plants
to incorporate best practices.
- Facilitate the construction of a model ethanol plant in Illinois
with high net energy yield and low environmental impacts.
- Initiative 25: Streamline permitting processes.
- Identify activities that should be exempted from permitting
requirements.
- Develop a process to expedite permitting of pollution control
equipment.
- Identify and implement means to expedite final action on
ethanol facility permit applications.
- Initiative 26: Help livestock producers achieve and maintain compliance
with environmental laws.
- Conduct site visits to provide technical assistance.
- Initiative 27: Encourage voluntary actions to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions to improve the environment and the economy.
- Implement the Illinois Conservation and Climate Initiative.
- Develop a Midwest Greenhouse Gas Registry in cooperation
with the Lake Michigan Air Directors' Consortium.
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