Drillilng in the Barnett Shale contributes to air pollution in the NT Region

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Opinion - Al Armendariz: We can't wish our smog away - Clean-air plan won't keep N. Texas from violating ozone standard. We deserve better.

Al Armendariz- Dallas Morning News - Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Dallas-Fort Worth's ozone smog is going to disappear. No more yellow, orange or red alert days. No more concern about children playing soccer at the park during summer and fall afternoons. No more guilt about not carpooling or not riding DART. In 2 ½ years, the lung-damaging, asthma-inducing ozone smog will be as much a part of Dallas' past as the Wright amendment and Cowboys games at the Cotton Bowl.

Why is the ozone problem going away? The state of Texas said so.

On June 15, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality submitted the latest in a long line of Dallas-Fort Worth clean-air plans to the Environmental Protection Agency. The plan was required by the federal Clean Air Act because North Texas does not meet the ozone air-quality standard.

The plan contains emission reductions that are supposed to ensure that our air quality will meet the ozone standard by the end of 2009. For this to happen, our ozone levels have to drop from the current level of 96 parts per billion to 84 ppb. A drop of 12 ppb is substantial – levels of ozone have never dropped this far in a short period of time in any metropolitan area in the history of the Clean Air Act.

The state's latest clean-air plan for the region targets emissions of nitrogen oxides, one of the two air pollutants that transform into ozone with the help of abundant summer sunlight. Over the next 2 ½ years, the plan will lower emissions from cars, trucks, factories and utilities in North Texas by approximately 5 percent.

The EPA is now evaluating the plan and will approve or reject it, based on whether it believes that the state has demonstrated conclusively that D-FW air will meet the ozone standard.

In contrast to the state's conclusions, I think the evidence is clear that the plan will not succeed and that our area will continue to violate the ozone standard well into the future. There are a number of reasons the plan will fail, including:

•EPA analyses indicate that emissions reductions of approximately 20 percent are required to lower ozone concentrations by 3 ppb. Remember, we need a 12 ppb drop to meet the standard.

•Ozone levels in North Texas would have to begin dropping immediately more than 10 times as fast as the state's own long-term data show is actually occurring to reach the standard by the end of 2009.

•The state's short-term data show that ozone levels are actually increasing in Tarrant, Denton and Parker counties.

•The state has submitted numerous failed ozone plans for our area, including in 1976, 1979, 1984, 1987, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2001 and 2003. Each has not only been a state failure but also a failure by the federal government, since the EPA approved each plan.

It is time for the failure to stop. We pay high taxes and deserve better service from our government administrators and scientists. The EPA should not approve the plan submitted by the state and instead require a new one with emission reductions that ensure that our area will meet the ozone standard.

Everyone who breathes should contact Steve Page, EPA director of the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, at page.steve@epa.gov, and Richard Greene, EPA regional administrator, at greene.richard1@epa.gov, and tell them that it is time for the state to submit a real clean-air plan for our area.


Al Armendariz is an assistant professor in Southern Methodist University's School of Engineering. His e-mail address is aja@engr.smu.edu.
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Perry wants 9 yr. extension on pollution standards - says Houston can't meet air quality standards

Wire Report - Sunday, June 17, 2007
HOUSTON - Gov. Rick Perry has asked federal officials for an extra nine years for the Houston-Galveston region to meet health standards for ground-level ozone, a request that if granted would make the area one of the last in the country to comply with clean-air guidelines.

In a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency dated Friday, Perry wrote that the region will be unable to meet guidelines by 2010 and that "not even a complete shutdown of the Houston Ship Channel would bring about sufficient reductions."

The request for an extra nine years to clean up Houston's smog is more than Harris County and city officials wanted. It's also the latest postponement in Houston's efforts to improve its air quality; the city's first federal deadline passed in 1975.

Houston officials and environmentalists said they were surprised that Perry asked for such a lengthy extension. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, as well as city and county officials, preferred a 2013 deadline.

"We thought it would be a challenge to do so by 2013 ... but we thought we could get close and give it shot," Mayor Bill White said. "I've said for years we have needed serious deadlines to ensure we were doing everything practical to reduce the ozone."

The EPA must reclassify Houston's smog problem from moderate to severe to grant the nine-year extension. The only city in the nation with a smog problem classified as severe by the EPA is Los Angeles.
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State gives OK to ozone plan

By SCOTT STREATER - Star-Telegram staff writer - Thu, May. 24, 2007

The state approved a controversial plan Wednesday for fixing Dallas-Fort Worth's longstanding ozone pollution problem despite a last-minute warning from a top federal official that the plan may be too weak to win federal approval.

Richard Greene, the Environmental Protection Agency's regional director in Dallas, sent a memo to state regulators Wednesday saying a preliminary federal review of the plan found "significantly fewer emissions reductions" than originally proposed.

Without those additional reductions, Greene said, ozone levels in four areas -- Fort Worth, Dallas, Denton and Frisco -- could continue to violate federal standards by the 2010 federal deadline.

All 19 of the region's ozone monitors must meet the standards for the Dallas-Fort Worth area to comply.

"The state has no desire to really regulate these kilns," he said.

State commissioners, during the nearly four-hour hearing in Austin on the Dallas-Fort Worth plan, defended their decision, saying they believe the plan will be enough for the region to meet the federal standards by 2010.

CLEANER AIR
The plan

The clean-air plan for North Texas approved by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Wednesday:

Requires cement kilns to cut ozone-forming emissions by 40 percent, less than local leaders had hoped.

Curbs vehicle emissions through ongoing state programs to replace or retrofit off-road construction equipment with pollution controls, to replace the oldest, dirtiest vehicles and to assist low-income motorists in making repairs if their car or truck fails the annual emissions inspection.

Counts on Federal Reformulated Gasoline standards to reduce automobile emissions.

Pushes for expansion of programs to promote carpooling and public transit.


"I am very concerned by these reports, and worry that the changes from the proposal, if adopted, would convert the [plan] from one that I believed had a strong chance of approval to [a plan] that ... may not be approvable," Greene wrote.

Local opposition

Greene's concerns were echoed by a wide array of area leaders and clean-air advocates, who said the plan could doom the area to potentially severe federal sanctions for noncompliance.

"Apparently, they don't consider what we think is important for our communities," Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck said.

"I think it's a tragedy that we don't do everything that we can to keep the air as clean as possible. I'm very disappointed."

Of particular concern are three cement plants -- Ash Grove Cement, TXI Operations and Holcim Inc. -- southeast of Fort Worth that are the largest industrial sources of ozone-forming pollution in the region.

The plan approved Wednesday calls for the plants to cut emissions by 40 percent.

But local leaders wanted the state to include a mandate for the cement plants to at least test cutting-edge pollution-control technology that would chemically change emissions into harmless water vapor.

The technology has the potential to slash ozone-forming emissions from the three plants by as much as 90 percent.

The state clean-air plan, however, calls for much lower emissions reductions, allowing the industry to install less expensive -- and less effective -- pollution controls.

"We think this community is still in danger from emissions from the cement kilns in Midlothian," Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Brooks said. "Without more stringent standards, the state has not done anything to help us at all."

State backing

Instead, the state commission Wednesday amended the clean-air plan to allow cement plants to emit slightly more ozone-forming pollutants than originally proposed after cement industry leaders told the commission's three-member board during its meeting in Austin that the plan was too tough.

"We cannot achieve these low numbers," said Michel Moser, the manager at Holcim's Midlothian cement plant.

Jim Schermbeck with Downwinders at Risk, a vocal cement plant critic, said he wasn't surprised.

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