Ozone at 3 sites likely to exceed safe levels long after the deadline
By DINA CAPPIELLO Houston Chronicle
Rosa Martinez walks her 5-year-old son, Mateo, to school each morning. By the time the state cleans up the air in her southwest Houston neighborhood, she'll no longer have to: Mateo will be old enough to drive.
The area around Bayland Park, where Martinez lives, will be one of the last places in Harris County to meet federal health standards for ground-level ozone, a main ingredient in smog, according to recent state projections.
If the predictions are right, concentrations of ozone near Bayland Park and Deer Park will exceed safe levels until 2018 or later, nine years past the deadline set by the federal government for Houston to comply with air-pollution laws.
The air in the Aldine area of north Houston, meanwhile, will be in compliance only slightly sooner: sometime after 2012.
For Martinez, who moved to the neighborhood adjacent to Bayland Park a year ago from Monterrey, Mexico, the news came as a shock.
"I don't know why it would be so high here," said Martinez, as a line of idling cars waited to drop children off at school behind her. "They should pay more attention to monitors near schools. Children should be the priority."
The biggest challengeThese three locations — each the site of a state-run air-pollution monitor — pose the biggest challenge to Texas' clean-air goals. Though 18 of 22 monitors in the Houston area are expected to reach the standard in time, even leveling the Ship Channel would not get Bayland Park, Deer Park and Aldine there by the 2009 ozone season, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. It takes only one monitor above the standard for the entire region to be out of compliance.
"Houston is like the perfect recipe for efficient ozone formation," said TCEQ Chairman Kathleen Hartnett White of the city's large industrial complex, traffic, population growth and weather. "We didn't get very close to attainment by eliminating the Ship Channel and all of its sources. Two of the key monitors were still very significantly ... above the standard."
But it's the East Harris County industrial corridor, according to Matt Fraser, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University, that largely is to blame for all three hot spots.
The typical scenario begins with industrial plants and ships along the channel releasing nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, Fraser said. Mixed in sunlight, these chemicals create ground-level ozone, triggering the high levels at Deer Park. The plume is then blown east or north, picking up more pollution from sources such as cars and trees as it moves.
Eventually, it reaches Bayland Park, or Aldine.
"These are all emissions from the Ship Channel; it just depends on which way the wind is blowing," Fraser said. "Under certain meteorological conditions it will be very difficult to control."
For these reasons, Gov. Rick Perry is likely to ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency later this year to reclassify Houston's smog problem from "moderate" to "serious" or "severe." Such a downgrading would give the region an additional three to nine years to reduce pollution, to allow enough time for federal controls on automobiles to take effect and to evaluate the latest research on ozone formation in the region.
Is enough being done?Though almost everyone agrees that 2009 is an impossible mark, there is disagreement as to whether enough is being done now.
The latest proposal from the TCEQ will be up for public comment in Houston on Monday. The plan, critics argue, offers few new solutions. It will require: ships to use low-emission diesel fuels, companies to better monitor and control pollution from storage tanks and local governments to develop strategies to reduce tailpipe emissions.
Even with the additions, some Houston neighborhoods will suffer for years with dirty air. By 2009, at least four locations will not meet health standards, according to the proposal. Five more are too close to call.
Elena Marks, Mayor Bill White's health policy director, said more options need to be brought to the table.
"I would not rush out there and say ... 'We can wipe out the Ship Channel, and no matter what, you are doomed,' " Marks said. "There are additional strategies that need to be discussed, researched and then implemented."
The TCEQ contends that the proposal is a first step. The agency has direct control over less than half of the nitrogen oxide emissions that contribute to the region's problem.
"Quite simply, I'd like to realistically figure out a way for ... an attainment date sooner. I just can't accept 2018," said Hartnett White in a recent meeting with the Houston Chronicle's editorial board. "The proposal is Chapter 1 ... Chapter 2 is to move as rapidly and aggressively as we can toward a realistic date."
As the bureaucrats figure out how to get there, residents of the neighborhoods will wait.
The monitor in Bayland Park, enclosed in a generic white trailer, sits amid a dozen soccer, softball, football and baseball fields that fill with children and senior citizens throughout the year. Several blocks in either direction are schools educating hundreds of youths, such as Sutton Elementary, where Martinez dropped off her son Mateo and daughter Samara last week.
Terry Abbott, a spokesman for the Houston Independent School District, said that all school nurses are alerted when ground-level ozone reaches unhealthy levels, and at times, outside activity is restricted.
Aldine Independent School District Superintendent Nadine Kujawa also said her district keeps tabs on pollution levels. The state measures concentrations of ground-level ozone from a trailer parked on the district's Hambrick Middle School campus.
At Bayland Park, however, there are no visible warnings when ozone reaches unhealthy concentrations, even though children and seniors, especially those engaged in physical activity, are more sensitive to the irritation smog can cause to the eyes, ears and throat.
Hasn't seen ill effectsDavid Carney, the former president of the Kyle Chapman Pony League, a teen baseball league that has played at the park since its opening in 1965, said he has not seen any ill effects from the pollution among players.
"I think the state needs to recalculate its instruments," Carney said.
Bill Hale, the 61-year-old president of the Harris County Senior Softball League, which uses and maintains two fields at the 68-acre park, says nothing will stop his 300 members from playing ball.
"I doubt seriously that anyone would quit the league, especially if they are working on the problem," Hale said. "At least they are working on it."
A member of the over-50 league for a decade, Hale said he has never heard anyone complain that playing in the area is hard on them.
"Our players are not dying off at a greater rate," he said. "I mean, we have guys that have died. But they are old."
dina.cappiello@chron.com
RESOURCES
Houston ozone animation: Watch animation of a plume of ozone rising from the Houston Ship Channel area across on a high-ozone day, Sept. 7, 2006. Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
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