Crash and Burn: Smogust is Mocking TCEQ Air Plan

Another late August day, another rise in DFW’s smog “Design Value,” another monitor breaking the law.

Friday wasn’t as bad as Thursday, but it was bad enough. Keller’s air monitor recorded a new season-high benchmark “Design Value” of 92 parts per billion. Two days ago it was 90. As of today, Keller’s smog level is exactly what it was in 2004 – before the last clean air plan was implemented.

Also on Friday, the “Dallas North” monitor became the 6th one to officially violate the Clean Air Act this summer. Last year there were two. You have to go back to 2006 to find so many DFW monitors in violation.

Seven monitors saw their season-high ozone readings set yesterday, although only three of these were above the old federal standard of 85 ppb.

Dallas North              98 ppb
Frisco                        92 ppb
Dallas Hinton             88 ppb
Greenville                  83 ppb
Kaufman                    76 ppb
Dallas Exec. Airport   78 ppb
Italy                            67 ppb

Another four had what are now routine “exceedences” of the 85 ppb standard.

Keller            97 ppb
Grapevine     91 ppb
Denton          87 ppb
Pilot Point     86 ppb

In all, there were seven eight-hour averages over the 85 ppb standard. No eight-hour averages over 100 ppb, but there were plenty of sites where hourly 100 and above readings were common from 2 pm to 6 pm.

14 out of 20 monitors have seen their season highs set the last two days. Two more monitors violated the Clean Air Act in that same 48 hour period, and the Design Value has gone up 2 ppb.

We checked, and according to those whiz-bang computer models the state uses in its proposed DFW air plan, the TCEQ- predicted Design Value for Keller next year is supposed to be 76 ppb – some 17 ppb lower than it is as of today. There’s never been a drop like that in the history of monitoring these things, going back to 1997.

And the so far 6 ppb rise in the Design Value this year means TCEQ must rely on more and more ridiculous scenarios to justify submitting its clean air plan to EPA that predicts everything will be hunky-dory in just 13 months.

Federal law says you have to have a three-year running average of Design Values that totals no more than 84 ppb in order for the DFW plan to succeed. Let’s review then. Last year’s Design Value was 86 ppb (we mistakenly listed it as 85 yesterday). This year’s will be at least 92 ppb. And that means the TCEQ needs that 76 ppb maximum reading next summer that its predicting for Keller for its plan to work. Without it, the three-year average exceeds 84 and the plan is finally, officially, completely, utterly dead.

That is, for the currently-proposed TCEQ DFW air plan to work with the numbers we have today, there can’t be a monitor in DFW that will register a fourth-highest reading higher than 76 ppb in 2012. As of today, 10 sites do.

TCEQ’s plan is failing by larger margins with each passing orange alert.