How Wrong is TCEQ About Smog in DFW…This Year?

DFW air quality got significantly worse in 2011. Last year, DFW saw three times the number of area air monitors violating the old 1987 85 ppb ozone standard – from two to seven. We also saw an increase in the severity of smog, with average concentrations rising from the mid-80's into the high 90's ppb range.

So far, 2012 has seemingly picked up where 2011 left off. We saw the highest March ozone levels since monitoring began in 1997. Last week, the Arlington Airport monitor exceeded a one-hour smog standard that was 20 years old. One that officials celebrated overcoming a decade ago. We already have two monitors that have recorded enough "exceedances" to make them official violators of the 85 ppb standard that we have not yet been able to meet despite two attempts over the last seven years.

But a mere seven months ago, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was predicting that 2012 would be the first year we would not see ANY violations of the old 85 ppb ozone standard.

In fact, according to the Commission's computer modeling exercises it submitted to EPA as part of the official DFW clean air plan, 2012 would be the best year ever recorded for ozone levels in DFW. Smog would reach historic, never-before-recorded lows. It would be a new day in DFW air quality. And it would all happen because enough people would buy enough new cars coming out of the worst national economic crisis of the last 80 years to lower pollution to unprecedented levels. Honest. That was the strategy.

TCEQ staffers were saying this with a straight face after the worst year for smog in North Texas since 2007. It seemed unlikely that the situation would turn around that fast. More than unlikely actually. On the other side of ridiculous. We said so at the time, but common sense doesn't dictate air quality policy anymore. TCEQ's computer modeling does. If it says everything will be hunky-dory, even in the face what strike us as incredible odds, well, that's because the computer is smarter than us.

We've written about the large escalation of Haynesville Shale gas mining and production pollution that could be contributing to DFW air quality getting worse in 2012. There are plenty of other suspects, including the politicalization of the TCEQ Chief Engineer's office, and the resulting junk science often used by the Agency to justify its inaction on any front. Nothing better symbolizes this junk science than the computer modeling used by the state to claim that all we had to sit back and watch the new cars roll off the lots and the air would be cleaner than it has in the last 40 years.

At the end of our first significant run of what the state calls "ozone episodes," for the 2012 season, we'd thought it might be instructive to see just how wrong the TCEQ computer modeling has been only a couple of weeks in Summer:

– Only four months into ozone season and 17 out of 18 DFW air monitors have already recorded smog levels in 2012 that have exceeded the annual concentrations predicted for them this year by TCEQ. The Eagle Mountain Lake in northwest Ft. Worth site is now exactly at its predicted value for the year. We wouldn't bet that it stays there very long.

– The underestimation error by TCEQ among the 18 air monitors ranges from 4 to 15 parts per billion and average 8 ppb. Eight monitors are off by at least 10 ppb or more. Pilot Point was the most underestimated to date, at 15 ppb above its annual number on June 31st.

– EPA enforces the ozone standard by watching the running three year averages of the 4th highest ozone reading at any one monitor. Two monitors – Keller and Grapevine – have already recorded high enough levels of smog in 2012, that when their current 4th highest readings are combined with their annual 4th highest from 2010 and 2011, they violate the 1987 85 ppb standard with a rolling average of 87 and 86 ppb respectfully. That is, DFW wouldn't have to have any more ozone alert days after last week for it to remain in "non-attainment" of the obsolete and "unprotective" 85 ppb standard. We've already blown it for the whole year. Now it's just a question of how bad.

– 16 out of 18 DFW air monitors are already out of compliance with the new 2011 75 ppb ozone standard. According to the TCEQ, that number was supposed to be five this year. Only the Greenville and Kaufman County monitors are legal at this point.

– Ominously, as of June 31st, 12 of the 18 monitors had already exceeded their 4th highest readings for all of 2010.

Traditionally, August is the worst month for DFW ozone. We have most of summer still to go. But this year we only needed two weeks of it to officially re-classify our air as unsafe and illegal.

Why does anybody continue to listen to TCEQ about this stuff?