The North Texas Clean Air Plan that was supposed to keep ozone pollution below federal limits has already fallen short in this year’s extreme heat, and the August peak ozone season is still to come.
On several days in June and July, ozone levels were above the current daily limit. That limit will soon be made even lower than it is today, increasing the challenge for North Texas.
"The levels this summer have put our three-year average above the level that the program says it safe and doctors say is safe," said Al Armendariz, an environmental engineering professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
He predicted the plan would fail when federal, state and local officials gathered on July 1, 2008, to announce the Environmental Protection Agency had approved it.
"I thought that they were being way too optimistic," Armandariz said.
But some officials said they believe it is too early to say the plan has failed.
"We are making progress," said Mike Eastland, executive director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "It’s slower than we would have hoped for. We hate that we have had already some accidences this summer, knowing that we've still got a month at least of warm weather to go."
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Ozone air pollution levels grow higher with hot weather and low wind. The North Texas Air Quality Plan includes a long list of measures to reduce emissions from individuals, government, industry and business.
The largest source of ozone in North Texas is motor vehicles. The plan includes motor vehicle emission testing for an expanded number of North Texas counties and incentives to encourage owners to replace automobiles and diesel equipment with newer, low-emission models.
"We're replacing schools buses and replacing cars," Eastland said. "But in this economy, it's very difficult to talk someone into doing that."
Eastland said the plan includes virtually every pollution-fighting measure that could legally be imposed.
"There was very little left on the table," he said.
However, Armendariz said he believes more could have been done before -- and must be done now.
"We've spent the last two years hoping that that plan would work, and it hasn't, and so now we've got to go back and craft some new ideas," he said.
This Web site shows a daily animation of the ozone pollution patterns over North Texas:
http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/compliance/monops/ozone_animation.pl?04
And this site provides ozone data for each of the monitoring sites and metropolitan areas in Texas:
http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/compliance/monops/8hr_attainment.pl
