061128 Houston unlikely to meet deadline on ozone

Nov. 28, 2006, 1:07AM
Houston unlikely to meet deadline on ozone
State may be forced to seek a lengthy extension to clear the skies

By ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

The greater Houston area will remain too smoggy to comply with federal clean air standards by a 2010 deadline, Texas officials say.

This almost certainly will prompt the state to seek an extension of its allotted time for clearing the skies, perhaps even a lengthy one. State environmental officials say they expect the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria region to meet healthy air standards no later than 2018.

"We feel comfortable that it will happen by then," said David Schanbacher, chief engineer of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the agency responsible for developing a plan to ensure the state meets clean air goals.

Some environmental groups, however, have seized upon a preliminary analysis by the state agency that suggests Houston's air may not be clean enough even by 2018 under the proposed plan.

The environmentalists, including Sabrina Strawn, executive director of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention, say that's because the cleanup plan for Houston simply isn't robust enough.

"We believe the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria area could meet the standards if there were the political will to do so," Strawn said. "So far, that hasn't been there."

To clean its air, Houston must control emissions of two "precursor" chemicals, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic chemicals, that react near the surface of the Earth with sunlight to form ozone. This chemical, helpful in the upper atmosphere for shielding the planet from ultraviolet rays, is harmful lower down, where it can irritate the respiratory system and aggravate asthma.

Strawn said a lack of political will is evident in a document released last week by the TCEQ, which has proposed several revisions its plan to clean Houston's air.

Among the new strategies: limiting chemical emissions from marine and storage tank sources and requiring certain marine fuels to meet Texas Low Emission Diesel standards.

The new strategies, Strawn said, fail to address the biggest contributor of nitric oxides to the atmosphere — cars and trucks. In the Houston area, 55 percent of these chemicals come from such mobile sources.

State officials say they have limited power to regulate these emissions, citing federal rules in the Clean Air Act that restrict the local creation of measures such as fuel economy and emission standards.

California rules
However, there is a loophole in the rules. States may not adopt their own emission standards, but they can adopt California's stricter rules on new vehicles. And there may now be a growing political movement to do just that in Texas.

One such call already has come from the greater Dallas area, another region currently in violation of the federal clean air standards. In late October, the North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee, which is working to bring that area into compliance, asked the Legislature to adopt California's emission standards.

A spokesman for state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said he was considering filing such a bill in the legislative session that begins in January.

"It is something that we're thinking about and actively researching," said Kenneth Besserman, Ellis' chief of staff.

The bill likely would have support from the city of Houston. Elena Marks, director of health policy for Mayor Bill White, said such a bill would be a "wonderful development."

Marks said her preliminary review of the proposed revisions to the state's plan for clearing the air have some merit but don't go far enough.

White, who has made improving Houston's air quality a priority, has begun transforming the city fleet with cleaner hybrid vehicles and has established a new, more environmentally friendly construction process for city buildings.

A request by the state to extend Houston's clean air deadline comes after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, acting in late 2004, already extended Houston's deadline from 2007 to 2010. The extension was granted in part because the EPA changed the standard — saying ozone levels would be measured over the course of an eight-hour period rather than a single hour.

TCEQ commissioners must approve the proposed revisions before the state submits its new plan to the EPA next summer.

May face penalties
If the EPA does not offer an extension, and Houston eventually breaks the clean air deadline, the region could face stiff penalties, including the possible loss of federal funding for roads.

But the TCEQ engineer, Schanbacher, said he does not foresee that happening. The EPA is looking for regions that have demonstrated significant progress toward cleaning their air, he said, and Houston has done that.

In 2000, according to the state agency, 4.5 million people in the greater Houston area were exposed to unhealthy levels of ozone at one point or another.

eric.berger@chron.com