Since DFW was first identified has having a smog problem in the mid to late 1980's, there's a standard formula that's become familiar to folks in local air quality: NOx and VOCs + Sunlight = Ozone. There have always been two primary culprits to North Texas' chronic smog problem. NOx, or Nitrogen Oxides which primarily come from combustion sources (engines, boilers, furnaces), and VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds that are mostly invisible plumes and fumes from things like gasoline pumps, storage tanks, as well as combustion. These pollutants combine with sunlight and heat that chemically interacts with them and forms ozone downwind. When the first air pollution control measures were adopted, Austin and the EPA agreed that VOCS were the driving force DFW ozone levels. Some old-timers may remember the Mrs. Baird's bakery on the West Freeway in Ft. Worth having to install controls that eliminated the smell of baking bread that was stout enough to waft across the highway. That's also why every gas pump in Collin, Denton, Dallas, and Tarrant Counties has a "Vapor Recovery Unit." Over the years, the blame shifted to a combination of VOCs and NOx, and that's what made it possible to bring large NOx polluters like cement plants and coal plants into the picture. Still, VOC emissions remained a major player in the DFW smog problem, and they've been addressed with controls on everything from solvents, to boat resins, to bakeries by every single clean air plan ever drafted by the state and EPA. But now Austin is saying VOCs aren't such a big problem after all, that DFW's smog is all about the NOx. Why? Austin's computer model says so. This is the same computer model that says DFW ozone levels will reach historic lows this summer. But might there be another reason? TCEQ's de-emphasis on VOCs coincides precisely with a very large jump in VOC pollution from the gas industry, a jump due to the explosion of drilling in the Barnett Shale and the government's lack of regulation to control it. In 2006, cars and trucks in DFW still spewed more VOCs than the gas industry. This year, the gas industry will release 30 MORE TONS PER DAY of VOCs than all the cars and trucks in DFW combined according to the TCEQ itself. But you'd never know it from looking at any of the public material the TCEQ produces about DFW's ozone problem. Instead it's all NOx all the time. This slant benefits a politicized TCEQ in a couple of ways. First, when you talk about NOx, you don't have to talk about the doubling of gas industry emissions over the past decade or so. Second, you can keep repeating the mantra that it's all about cars. Cars only produce about 15% of the VOC pollution in DFW vs 49% of all NOx in North Texas. No need to worry about new controls on cement plants or coal plants when it's really all about cars. Until today, that TCEQ message creep was showing up locally in websites and promotional material sponsored by the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) made up of area municipal and county governments. Unlike in past years when the familiar formula of both NOx and VOcs was recited to the public, this year NCTCOG's Air North Texas site, Air Facts page trumpeted that "On road vehicles cause half of the ozone forming emissions. Ozone forms when nitrogen oxides (NOx) combine with sunlight and intense heat." That just wasn't true. When you combine all VOC and NOx emissions (as calculated by TCEQ) in DFW, on-road vehicles account for 29% of ALL ozone forming emissions. Point Sources like cement plants and other industrial facilities, combined with oil and gas sources, total 25% - a much different looking pie chart than when you use NOx emission alone. To its credit, as a result of our inquiry, the NCTCOG Air North Texas "air facts" page has been re-edited to put VOCs back into the equation as of today, along with a little bit of spin claiming that "historical emphasis has indicated NOx reductions are the most appropriate way the region can lower ozone levels." We label that spin because it relies totally on the TCEQ's point of view, which has been, how do we put it, "historically wrong." We've already discussed how the DFW smog problem began as just a VOCs problem. We know they're still a factor. And if NOx reductions alone are so darn effective, why haven't they worked better? According to the TCEQ, total NOx pollution from ALL DFW sources decreased by almost 150 tons per day over the last six years. And yet 2011 was the worst ozone season since 2007. VOC Pollution? It's increased by 17 tons per day despite almost every individual category going down, save the ambiguous "Area" sources and emissions from the Oil and Gas industry. So if NOx decreases ozone so much more effectively than VOC decreases, how come 2011 ozone levels didn't reflect that? Many public officials around the country cite scientific evidence that already smoggy air turbocharges the ability of gas patch pollution to create more ozone. Usually very weak VOC molecules are transformed into smog-producing machines. TCEQ refuses to factor in this scientifically validated increased reactivity of VOCs being released by gas sources despite predominate winds carrying already smoggy air into the heart of drilling country in Tarrant, Denton, Wise, and Johnson Counties. It's model doesn't recognize this phenomena happening. TCEQ may also be underestimating the ability of these weak VOCs to already make ozone. In her 2011 landmark "Leaking Money" report for Downwinders, Dr. Melanie Sattler wrote that just the sheer volume of new gas industry VOCs is enough to affect DFW ozone levels. If DFW is ever going to solve its chronic smog problem, it has to have reliable information about what the increase in gas industry pollution is doing to our air. We don't have that now and no one in Austin is interested in finding out. Local leaders would be wise to decouple themselves from the TCEQ's politicized and uncurious approach to DFW air quality planning in Austin and find funding for their own research that can test for things the state doesn't want to know....Here's the full statement of Chris Klaus, Senior program Manager at NCTCOG and the lead staff person ther for all things air: "We appreciate your e-mail and comments regarding air quality facts and information on our Air North Texas and the North Central Texas Council of Governments’ (NCTCOG) websites.  We welcome and value this type of input.  In regards to your comments, historical emphasis has indicated NOx reductions are the most appropriate way the region can lower ozone levels.  Of the primary emission sources, on-road vehicle activities account for nearly half of the NOx inventory.  We frequently discuss NOx and VOCs when providing outreach, and have updated the Air North Texas website to make sure VOCs are referenced when appropriate.  Air North Texas is meant for the general public, and NCTCOG staff feels it is more effective to educate them about what they can do to improve air quality, and how to protect their health and the environment."  Read More

First, if you haven't read our updated post below, please notice the correction to Tuesday's initial story. DFW's "Moderate" classification by EPA under the new 75 ppb ozone/smog standard is actually a more serious ranking than Houston's "Marginal" ranking. In fact, areas with Marginal status are expected to be able to achieve the standard without even having to submit a clean-up plan with special pollution control measures. That's right, for the first time in forever, Houston won't even have to submit a "SIP" - State implementation Plan - while DFW will have to write yet another one, the fourth one in 15 years. According to EPA's announcement, most metropolitan areas were classified as "Marginal," identifying North Texas right off the bat as one of the more seriously smoggy places in America (but still way behind parts of California with an "Extreme" label slapped on the LA basin, and "Severe" for three more separate areas.) Most of DFW's sunbelt peers have fared better than our metormess. Atlanta started out at the same place as DFW 15-20 years ago, but has cleaned up its act enough to rate a "Marginal" in this round. Phoenix is also "Marginal." But of course neither one of those has a major natural gas play in the middle of them. Second, the timeline for the next DFW's next smog plan is known. The clock begins ticking 60 days after the new designations are published in the Federal Register - sometime between July and September of this year. From that date, DFW leaders and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality have exactly three years - until the summer of 2015 - to design and build a new clean air plan for DFW that will meet the 75 ppb standard. We have a three year running average of 90.6 ppb. Not to worry however. TCEQ has already told us that ozone levels will drop to historic new lows this summer thanks to so many new cars being bought. On the outside chance that doesn't happen, the Rick Perry- driven TCEQ will have to find some other nonsensical rationalization for avoiding new controls on the Governor's industrial contributors - cement plants, the gas industry, and power plants, like they did last year with the new car strategy. But don't look for Austin to even start working on this clean air plan until 2014. There's no rush because the agency doesn't believe the 75 ppb standard is even necessary. The Commission's leadership was vocal in its opposition against it.  If local leaders were smart, they'd disconnect their own clean air efforts from the state's and begin doing their own planning immediately, but traditionally they don't move until TCEQ says "jump". Add to this the new element of regional elected officials who, like Governor Perry, not only don't want to impose any new controls on industry, but don't even concede the value of cleaner air, and you already have a formula that's in danger of repeating last year's Worst Clean Air Plan Ever. 2015 isn't that far away, but without a serious overhaul of the regional air quality planning process, hope of meeting the new smog standard seems further than ever. By the way, counting our correction of the original story we ran on Tuesday, we've now published three posts on the new smog boundaries and deadlines. That's three more than any other source that we can find this morning.   Read More

(A previous edition of this post defined Houston's EPA rank of "Marginal" has being more sever than DFW's EPA rank of "Moderate." This was a mistake. In fact, it's just the opposite. "Moderate" is more severe under EPA's ranking than "Marginal." We regret the error. Thanks to a reader for pointing it out.)..........At around closing time came news that the EPA had finalized the boundaries of the new "non-attainment area" for smog in North Texas that corresponds to enforcement of the "new" 75 ppb ozone standard approved last year. The 9 counties that were already in violation of the older standard are still there: Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, and Tarrant. The only new addition is Wise County, but it's a huge one given its prodigious amount of gas industry pollution and commuter traffic to Tarrant and Denton Counties. It also means that Wise County will be getting an ozone monitor. If it's placed correctly by TCEQ - and that's a big if - it could be giving us a much truer understanding of how high or low ozone levels are really going. Since predominant winds during "ozone season" (April -November) are from the southeast to northwest, much of DFW's dirty air gets pushed into Wise County, where it then officially falls off the map because there's no air monitors there to record it. TCEQ likes it that way because ozone readings in Wise - where DFW dirty air meets gas patch emissions - could be significantly higher than in most of the rest of DFW. And that would dampen the Austin happy talk about improving DFW air quality. Also coming to Wise are things like those Vapor Recovery units on gasoline pumps, and other stricter pollution control requirements - although the impact on the entrenched gas industry infrastructure already there is unclear. Hood County was also singled out by EPA for inclusion in the non-attainment area but is left off this final order. It also has a number of gas industry facilities, including compressor stations, although most have shown up over the last ten years as opposed to Wise, which has seen decades of oil and gas production. There was no explanation for Hood exclusion in EPA's letter. DFW will be classified as a "Moderate" non-attainment area under the new standard while Houston will get a less severe "Marginal" classification. Dallas and Houston remain Texas' only non-attainmenta areas for smog, although that could certainly change over time. Next up is EPA's determination of the compliance timeline for all non-attainment areas. The worse the air, the more time a region has to clean it up. Officials don't have to get serious about cleaner air until around 2015 for a 2017-18 deadline. That''s been the pattern up to now - keep waiting until the last minute to think about how to dig yourself out of a multi-decade deep hole. And believe us, with this process, 2 years is "the last minute." There could be all kinds of useful planning and researching going on right now but they'll be none of that.  Because insuring receipt of federal highway dollars, not protecting public health, has been the primary motivating factor behind the clean air machinery in North Texas. Until those priorities are reversed and clean air is sought for its own worth, we're likely to always be behind the curve, chasing "unattainable" smog standards.  Read More

(CORRECTION: A previous edition of this post cited Houston's "Marginal" classification for ozone pollution by EPA as more severe than DFW's "Moderate". In fact the opposite is true, "Moderate" is a more severe classification than "Marginal." We regret the error and apologize for any confusion this caused)........At around closing time came news that the EPA had finalized the boundaries of the new "non-attainment area" for smog in North Texas that corresponds to enforcement of the "new" 75 ppb ozone standard approved last year. The 9 counties that were already in violation of the older standard are still there: Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, and Tarrant. The only new addition is Wise County, but it's a huge one given its prodigious amount of gas industry pollution and commuter traffic to Tarrant and Denton Counties. It also means that Wise County will be getting an ozone monitor. If it's placed correctly by TCEQ - and that's a big if - it could be giving us a much truer understanding of how high or low ozone levels are really going. Since predominant winds during "ozone season" (April -November) are from the southeast to northwest, much of DFW's dirty air gets pushed into Wise County, where it then officially falls off the map because there's no air monitors there to record it. TCEQ likes it that way because ozone readings in Wise - where DFW dirty air meets gas patch emissions - could be significantly higher than in most of the rest of DFW. And that would dampen the Austin happy talk about improving DFW air quality. Also coming to Wise are things like those Vapor Recovery units on gasoline pumps, and other stricter pollution control requirements - although the impact on the entrenched gas industry infrastructure already there is unclear. Hood County was also singled out by EPA for inclusion in the non-attainment area but is left off this final order. It also has a number of gas industry facilities, including compressor stations, although most have shown up over the last ten years as opposed to Wise, which has seen decades of oil and gas production. There was no explanation for Hood exclusion in EPA's letter. DFW wil be classified as a "Moderate" non-attainment area under the new standard while Houston will get a less severe "Marginal" classification. Dallas and Houston remain Texas' only non-attainmenta areas for smog, although that could certainly change over time. Next up is EPA's determination of the compliance timeline for all non-attainment areas. The good news is that DFW's deadline should be sooner than Houston's because it's not as severely ranked. The worse the air, the more time a region has to clean it up. The bad news is that it could still mean officials don't have to get serious about cleaner air until around 2015 for a 2017-18 deadline. That''s been the pattern up to now - keep waiting until the last minute to think about how to dig yourself out of a multi-decade deep hole. And believe us, with this process, 2 years is "the last minute." There could be all kinds of useful planning and researching going on right now but they'll be none of that.  Because insuring receipt of federal highway dollars, not protecting public health, has been the primary motivating factor behind the clean air machinery in North Texas. Until those priorities are reversed and clean air is sought for its own worth, we're likely to always be behind the curve, chasing "unattainable" smog standards.  Read More

Sunday marked the official start of the 2012 ozone season. Unofficially, it began the week before on March 24th, when both the Frisco and "Dallas North" ozone monitors operated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recorded violations of the new federal standard of 75 ppb, and then on March 25th, when the Keller, Grapevine, and Eagle Mountain Lake monitors also all recorded violations of the 75 standard. Frisco came within less than a single ppb of being in violation of the old 85 ppb and set the record for the highest March ozone reading TCEQ's ever recorded. It's this old 85 ppb standard that DFW is still trying to meet even as the regulatory goalposts have been moved back to account for new science linking smog to heart attacks and strokes at lower levels of exposure. In submitting its new clean air plan to EPA to finally get below 85 ppb, you might remember that TCEQ predicted that in 2012, DFW would see the lowest ozone averages ever recorded - primarily because so many people are replacing their older more polluting cars with newer, cleaner ones. This prediction even came two months after the end of the 2011 ozone season showed DFW had worse smog than Houston. No, state leaders were not deterred by naysayers in taking a strong, optimistic stand for clean air when it came time to turn-in its compliance plan for EPA. Theirs is a faith-based initiative. According to Austin, all 18 DFW air quality monitors will be registering lower levels of smog in 2012 than any of them have ever recorded in the decade since monitoring began in DFW. At some monitors, TCEQ predicts summer maximums will drop by 40 parts per billion or more, an annual decrease no monitor in DFW has ever registered. Given the high readings from March already, it's hard to believe that this prediction could possibly come true, but hey, they're the experts,right?  So put away those gas masks and get out and breathe that fresh North Texas air. Haze? No, that's just steam.   Read More

(Dallas)----Kansas City-based Ash Grove Cement Company has submitted a permit amendment to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that seeks permission to convert its Midlothian plant from three wet process kilns operation to a single dry process kiln by 2014. In a cover letter to the TCEQ dated January 13^th, Trinity Consultants’ Kasi Dubbs writes that, “With this permit amendment application, Ash Grove is proposing to modify Permit Number 1 to decommission two kilns at the plant, and reconstruct that third kiln from a wet process kiln to a preheater, precalciner kiln system." According to the permit amendment application, total plant manufacturing capacity will decrease by 230, 000 tons a year, from a maximum of 1,182,000 tons of cement to 949,000 tons. Ash Grove claims that this decrease in capacity combined with cleaner dry process kiln technology will reduce pollution from its Midlothian operations by almost 105,000 tons of air pollution a year, including 98,000 tons of CO2, 6,000 tons of Sulfur Dioxide, and 560 tons of smog-forming Nitrogen Oxides. Ash Grove’s decision means that in two years, Texas will no longer host any obsolete wet cement kilns that were the industry standard throughout the 20^th Century but whose energy inefficiency and pollution made them disadvantageous in the 21^st. As recently as 2008, Midlothian had almost a fifth of the nation’s total wet kilns. Wet kilns depend on massive quantities of water to mix the ingredients of cement and then uses equally massive amounts of energy to evaporate the water out of the cement through exposure to extreme heat. They began to fall out of favor after the second Arab oil embargo of the 1980’s when energy prices climbed significantly. Their numbers have been steadily declining for decades. In 2010, TXI Cement announced they were closing their four wet kilns in Midlothian, almost a decade after operating side-by-side with its huge new dry “Kiln #5”. With Ash Grove’s conversion, there will be only a handful of wet kilns left in the entire U.S. Citizens who had spent years campaigning to close the Midlothian wet kilns were celebrating. “This is truly an end to an era. These kilns have been operating since 1965. They were the dirtiest cement kilns in Texas. They inspired a grassroots rebellion in DFW that forced Ash Grove to court. Their closure is one more step in bringing all of the Midlothian cement plants into the modern era,” said Jim Schermbeck, Director of Downwinders at Risk, the local clean air group founded almost 20 years ago to oppose the burning of hazardous waste in the Midlothian kilns. It was Downwinders who broke the story on January 4^th that Ash Grove was finally considering dry conversion in Midlothian, while also being the target of a national EPA enforcement action. The group encouraged it supporters to launch waves of e-mail blasts to both the company’s headquarters and EPA administrators urging Ash Grove to commit to dry conversion, while also seeking to include the switch as part of the agency’s list of demands in any national settlement. Nine days later, Ash Grove submitted its permit amendment to the TCEQ. Regulators admitted that the publicity probably accelerated the final corporate decision in Kansas City. In 2006, Downwinders successfully pushed for inclusion of a recommendation in that year’s DFW smog plan that urged local governments to buy cement exclusively from the state’s dry kilns to provide an incentive for wet kiln operators to modernize. Schermbeck and the group then began their “green cement campaign” that methodically collected agreements from city and county governments that cut Ash Grove off as a potential cement supplier for municipal and county projects. Dallas passed the nation’s first green cement policy in May of 2007 during the last days of Mayor Laura Miller’s term. Over the next two years, Ft. Worth, Arlington, Plano, Denton and the Dallas County School District passed green cement policies – all unanimously. When Tarrant County passed a green cement policy by a vote of 5-0 in November 2008 Ash Grove decided it couldn’t afford to lose any more customers and took the County and all the rest of the green cement cities to court. Last January, when it looked like Dallas and Arlington might be forced to give up their policies as part of a settlement with Ash Grove, Downwinders stepped in and was praised for reaching a compromise that saved the policies’ intent to force modernization, but removed the threat of Ash Grove legal action. Meanwhile, in the 2007 and 2009 state legislatures, green cement bills garnered a bi-partisan group of sponsors including former State Senator Kim Brimer, his successor, State Senator Wendy Davis, and Tarrant County State Representative Vickie Truett. Schermbeck noted that the green cement campaign had been of the few grassroots environmental success stories during the tenure of Governor Rick Perry. Ash Grove’s decision was also just the latest victory in a string of wins by citizens that have transformed each of the three Midlothian cement plants into more modern facilities. In 2005, Holcim Cement reached a settlement with Downwinders that resulted in the first use of a specific pollution control technology that is now standard equipment on new kilns. In 2008, TXI Cement suspended operation and then closed its four wet kilns, and stopped burning hazardous waste. Now Ash Grove is converting the last wet kilns in Texas. Comparing the emissions generated by all of the Midlothian cement plants before and after the changes sought by Downwinders over the last two decades, there’ll be at least 23,000 tons less air pollution when the new Ash Grove kiln goes online in 2014 than at the peak of the bad old days in the late 1990’s and early part of the 21^st Century at all three plants – not including the reduction of an estimated hundreds of thousands of tons of greenhouse gases like CO2 that weren’t even officially counted until recently.“I think anyone will be hard pressed to find a more successful grassroots group in the state of Texas over the last 10 years than Downwinders at Risk,” said Schermbeck. “It’s hard work to win even one of these concessions from industry. To be able to reduce this amount of air pollution from all three plants is an accomplishment that will be hard to duplicate. But that doesn’t mean we won’t be trying.”Schermbeck noted that the group has been busy pressing for the adoption of advanced pollution controls at the cement plants that have been used for a decade in Europe but have yet to reach the U.S.  He expects to see those controls included in the next DFW clean air plan. “We’re not stopping until every cement plant in North Texas is a state-of-the-art facility.”  Read More

Late Friday EPA announced that it was recommending two more North Texas counties - Wise and Hood - join the current nine-county DFW "non-attainment" area for smog, or ozone pollution for purposes of trying to reach the new 75 parts per billion federal standard. In doing so, the EPA disagreed with the latest State of Texas plan to leave the non-attainment area boundaries unchanged. But as the Star-Telegram points out today, that wasn't the original position of the state. In 2008, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality suggested both Wise and Hood be included in DFW's smog zone. According to the documents submitted to EPA by TCEQ supporting this inclusion (accessible via a link in the S-T article), "Wise County produces significant stationary source emissions, ranking 2nd in the 13-county air quality planning area for NOx emissions in 2005. Hood County, the thirteenth county in the air quality planning area, has a design value of 84 parts per billion for 2005 through 2007, and a preliminary design value for 2006 through 2008 of 77 parts per billion."  But, as the S-T story points out, TCEQ commissioners requested that Wise be removed from the recommendation to the governor’s office in December of 2008 and Hood was cut out of the recommendation less than two months ago. Supposedly, these counties were removed by the state because ozone averages up to and including 2010 were lower than the ones in previous years. But that's only one criterion and since Wise doesn't have  monitor at all - because TCEQ is afraid of what it might find - that's not a legitimate argument for its absence on the TCEQ list to EPA. But wait there's more. In the documents EPA sent the state to justify both Wise and Hood Counties being included, it cites a number of different factors, including new emissions from Barnett Shale gas production. EPA used a national 2008 comprehensive emissions inventory to account for how much smog-producing Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) were coming from each North Texas county. According to this data, Hood County had 5500 tons a year of NOx emissions, and 9500 tons a year of VOCs FROM ALL SOURCES, while Wise had 12,000 tons a year of NOx and 23,700 tons a year of VOCs. Those are big enough numbers to get noticed. And yet EPA notes that a year later, TCEQ did its own Barnett Shale emissions inventory and found even higher totals for some counties. For Hood, Shale production accounted for 7000 tons a year of NOx - or more than 1500 tons more a year than the EPA's inventory of all sources in Hood County combined. VOCs from gas pollution accounted for 2100 tons a year, or almost a quarter of the EPA inventory total. In Wise, TCEQ's shale inventory found 2500 tons of NOX, and 6000 tons of VOCs a year being emitted from gas production. In addition, EPA traced back where dirty air came from on high ozone days at selected Tarrant County and Parker County smog monitors. It concluded that these "back trajectories" for the Eagle Mountain Lake and Parker County monitors "further support that air that is transported from Hood and Wise Counties ends up in the area when ozone exceedences are observed." As we noted on Friday, this is the first time in the two decade battle over DFW air quality that gas industry air pollution has been a reason for including a county in the DFW non-attainment area. That's what makes this latest announcement such a milestone, and worthy of more discussion in places like the Dallas and Denton gas drilling task forces that are charged with re-writing those cities gas mining ordinances.   Read More

Yesterday the EPA sent Governor Perry a letter saying that it had rejected the state's recommendation to keep the DFW non-attainment area for smog, or ozone pollution, restricted to the same nine counties, and instead will expand it to include Wise and Hood Counties. This is overdue good news. Wise County is where the pollution from DFW often goes during"ozone season" when south by southeast winds blow everything north by northwest. TCEQ has been avoiding putting any ozone monitors in Wise County for fear of the high levels of ozone pollution they might find there which would make DFW air quality look even worse that it already is. Wise County is also the birthplace of horizontal fracking of gas hosts countless wells, compressors, pipelines and a huge processing facility in Bridgeport. These emissions, along with the commuter travel from Wise to the rest of DFW, and the fact that the county is already part of the regional transportation authority, are all reasons why it's being included in this latest designation. Hood County's Gas drilling and commuter travel is primarily responsible for its inclusion, although it hosts some power plants as well. According to the EPA, high ozone readings near Wise, "indicates that this county should be included in the nonattainment area. ... The high growth in these emissions is due in large part to growth in emissions from Barnett Shale gas production development, but also due to growth in population."  It's the first time the EPA has added counties to the North Texas non-attainment area because of gas industry pollution. Both counties will now be automatically included in the air quality planning process that will determine what the next DFW clean air plan, aimed at the new 75 parts per billion federal ozone standard announced in September, will look like. No start date for that process yet, but the final plan for DFW to reach 75 ppb must be submitted by 2015 or so which means we may see the machinery gearing up after next year's presidential election. Meanwhile, new restrictions will begin to be introduced, including "off-sets" (new large "stationary" source of pollution can't relocate to Wise or Hood without committing to reducing more smog-forming pollution than they would emit) and vapor recovery units on gas station pumps.   Read More

Tuesday morning saw the last 2012 meeting of the North Texas Clean Air Steering Committee at the Council of Government's HQ in Arlington. It was also the lowest point in DFW air quality planning in the last 20 years. On the agenda was a summary of the latest TCEQ clean air plan for DFW, the one that predicts we'll have the cleanest air we've ever had next summer - just in time to avoid a third failure in reaching a 1997 85 parts per billion smog standard in the last five years. Downwiders Director and Committee member Jim Schermbeck grilled TCEQ engineer David Brymer about the probability of every DFW monitor hitting historic lows in 2012, as the TCEQ computer model driving this air plan predicts. "It'll be very challenging," was his response. No. Getting unemployment below 7% is challenging. Having the cleanest air on record a year after suffering the worst air in five years is downright impossible, and TCEQ knows this. EPA knows this. Everyone knows this. And yet the TCEQ Commissioners will be voting to submit this DOA plan to EPA next Tuesday, because "the modeling" shows we'll be doing great! Sitting through this TCEQ storytelling time was a minority of Committee members. Only a handful bothered to show-up, and most of them left before the final discussions. Attendance at these meetings over the last two years by almost everyone but the three environmental representatives has been awful. But maybe the reason a lot of them didn't show up on Tuesday was because their decision to trust TCEQ back in January and not vote to recommend any new pollution reduction strategies for this clan air plan seems even more foolish and irresponsible now  - after the worst smog since 2007 and a state plan that was written by Mother Goose. "The TCEQ knows best" mentality was ever-present this time around, fueled of course by people who've never dealt with TCEQ, and/or who are ideological soulmates of Governor Perry who don't want any new pollution controls measures imposed by government. Missing from this cycle of air quality planning was the gravitas of past sessions, where there was actually some seriousness about cleaning the air. But no worry, we'll all be back at it in a year or so when the regulatory machinery will be gearing-up for a new clean air plan for DFW to meet the new ozone standard of 75 ppb. Nothing in life is certain but death, taxes and DFW smog plans.   Read More

Computer modeling in DFW’s newest anti-smog plan concludes that North Texas will reach historical – some would say ridiculous - levels of clean air next summer, only months after the region recorded its worst air pollution levels in half a decade.   Read More