Ira Glass

The federal EPA wasn't talking to the press about the chocolate factory when I called the Illinois State EPA.

The manager of compliance and enforcement for the Bureau of Air, a cheerful public servant named Julie Armitage, informed me that there had been a misunderstanding.

Yes, she said, the coal plants had belched out too many particles 7,600 times, but each of these times was very, very short.

At the least, a momentary spike, at the most, six minutes long.

Each one was a blip, she said.

Automatic monitoring equipment is going 24 hours a day, taking readings.

Add up all the blips per year, and you get 211 blips per plant per year, meaning that well over 99% of the time, the plants are in compliance with the law.

And as for the fact that now there may be less chocolate smell in Chicago?

And you don't feel any sort of twinge as an environmental regulator who's here to make our world a better place, as you are, that that could be the upshot of the whole thing?

Yeah.

You don't feel any sort of twinge if that were to happen?

And and wherever this sentence is going, this is exactly not the answer we the people of Illinois want to hear.

We don't want to hear about laws and regulations.

The Fed's inspected just like they're supposed to.

Blommer's was, in fact, emitting too much chocolate.

End of story.

And then in the months after I had the conversation with her, the EPA says Blommer fixed the problem.

stopped spewing particles into the air that violated the law.

And good news, incredibly, what they're emitting still smelled like delicious chocolate.

And then, finally, years after we first broadcast this story, in 2024, bombers shut down a Chicago factory.