Arlington: Where Clean Air Plans Go To Die

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.