EPA, State Officials Plan Meeting on Clean-Air Plan

By Scott Streater, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas - Saturday, 26 May 2007

May 26--The federal Environmental Protection Agency continues to press the state over last-minute changes that appear to weaken an ozone clean-up for Dallas-Fort Worth.

Top administrators with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality are set to meet next week in Dallas with federal Environmental Protection Agency officials to try and resolve the EPA's concerns that the plan will not bring the Dallas-Fort Worth region into compliance with the ozone standards.

The tension between the two sides is unusual because the state commission and the EPA worked together closely to develop the State Implementation Plan, which outlines exact steps the region must take to meet federal ozone standards by a 2010 deadline.

The state formally approved the plan Wednesday with reduced requirements. Before the vote, EPA Regional Administrator Richard Greene warned state leaders in a memo that the revisions to the plan would make it difficult to win federal approval; the EPA has the ultimate say-so as to whether it is approved.

He said later that he and his staff were "surprised" and "puzzled" by the changes, which were made without informing the EPA.

"They didn't contact us," Greene said. "They just posted it on their Web site and one of our staff members discovered it just a very few days ago."

But Andy Saenz, a spokesman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in Austin, said state officials did inform the EPA of the changes before they were made.

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