This is a week for Texas, particularly Dallas-Fort Worth, to be on pins and needles on the subject of air quality.
The Metroplex does not meet federal air quality standards for ground-level ozone pollution, will not meet them this year and faces an almost impossible task in meeting them next year in time for an Environmental Protection Agency deadline.Failure to meet that deadline could result in sanctions including the loss of federal money for highway construction and other transportation projects.What's more, the EPA is expected to announce even tougher ozone standards soon. Those standards are expected to be in a range that DFW can only dream about. The EPA said Tuesday that the new, tougher standards are still under review and won't be announced this week as planned.The EPA is expected to make a different announcement Thursday: new regulations for air pollution from oil and natural gas activities. That will hit home in North Texas' Barnett Shale, site of a natural gas drilling boom.Gov. Rick Perry, who thrives on complaining about the EPA and calling it an example of the federal government sticking its nose into Texas business, should be having a field day.First things first: The EPA said last year it was reclassifying Dallas-Fort Worth as a "serious nonattainment" area because of its continued high ozone levels. Ozone is a major component of smog and poses a severe health hazard for people with heart conditions, as well as children with asthma or bronchitis.Ground-level ozone forms when two byproducts of engine combustion and industrial activities, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, combine in the presence of sunlight. It gets bad on sunny summer days, like now.Monitoring equipment at locations across DFW measure ozone all day, every day. The limit under the Clean Air Act is 84 parts per billion.The EPA ignores the three highest measurements at each monitoring site each year. The fourth-highest measurement is averaged over the most recent three years to determine whether the ozone level is too high.It's been a hot summer, and DFW has already failed the test this year.A monitoring site in Keller, where prevailing winds carry the area's ozone, has been tagged with a fourth-highest ozone level this year of 90 parts per billion, on June 6. Its three higher measurements were 92 parts per billion on June 22 and July 6 and 90 parts per billion on July 7.The site's three-year ozone average will end the season at no less than 88 parts per billion, compared with the upper limit of 84 parts per billion. And we still have August and September to go.Next year, simple math says the Keller site must have a fourth-highest measurement of no more than 77 parts per billion to comply with the standard.And that's an outdated standard, vintage 1997. Under former President George W. Bush, the EPA said that standard doesn't protect public health and set a new standard of no more than 75 parts per billion.Court battles ensued, and President Barack Obama's EPA set the proposed new standard aside.The EPA has been working on new regulations ever since. The new limit is expected to be in the range of 60 to 70 parts per billion.Finally, environmental activists say new regulations are needed for oil and gas activities because they emit toxic pollutants and contribute to ozone.A knee-jerk reaction to all of this might be similar to Perry's. Why are the feds putting out new regulations?Oh, to protect the air we breathe.Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
