In mid-February, EPA replied to TCEQ’s twice-submitted plan, this won’t work.  Photo of Luminant's Big Brown coal-fired plant in Freestone County, one of three plants considered to be the single largest source of ozone-producing emissions in North Texas. 

March 4, 2016

GreenSourceDFW.org gave readers ringside seats at the January Texas Commission on Environmental Quality hearing on our state air quality agency’s plan to make our air breathable. An update is due.

For those who missed it, we learned that DFW’s air quality is now rated worse than Houston’s. The Dallas Medical Society informed us that smog levels in the 10-county area cause 77 deaths from pollution-related respiratory diseases annually and cost residents more than $500 million a year in economic losses.  

Smog here may be obvious only to those with small children, elderly family or asthma, or ones living in fracking zones – until the “red alert” days grime the horizon —but  the American Lung Association gives North Texas an “F” rating.

And that’s the rating, not in so many words, that the Environmental Protection Agency gave the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality’s plan to fix our air. In mid-February, EPA replied to TCEQ’s twice-submitted plan, this won’t work. Measures in the state’s plan can’t reasonably meet federal ground-level ozone standards by the 2017 deadline. 

TCEQ failed in the Technology section of its plan for the second time, requiring insufficient “reasonably available control technology,” or RACT – such as smokestack scrubbers – to clean the emissions from polluting facilities. And TCEQ set its target reduction in nitrous oxide (NOX), a key component of smog, at only 10 to 25 percent of the cuts EPA’s science says is needed.  Here it gets a bit wonky.

TCEQ targeted a reduction of 20 to 40 million tons per day of NOX. EPA calls for cutting NOX by 100 to 200 million tons per day. How much is that? Same as the NOX output of all DFW motor vehicles, off-road and on the road, 161 million tons.   

“We’re fairly certain that the EPA will reject the state implementation plan for its RACT [shortfalls], and we’ll be watching in April and May,” says Jim Schermbeck, director of public clean-air group Downwinders At Risk.

There are multiple possible sources for emissions reduction that TCEQ has not targeted so far. The single largest source of ozone-producing emissions in DFW blows in from three coal-fired power plants in East Texas. The agency has bypassed requiring cleanup of these, despite petitions from the Dallas Medical Society, Texas Medical Association and other stakeholders.

However, since mid-February, the EPA identified high levels of sulfur dioxide pollution in East Texas surrounding Luminant's Martin Lake, Big Brown and Monticello coal-fired plants. The agency designated these three local areas as out of compliance with the Clean Air Act.  

“This preliminary decision is an important step in compelling the state to create a plan to address the problem and also helps communities living in the designated areas better understand this dangerous pollution,” commented the Sierra Club’s Lone Star chapter news.

Other air quality factors are getting federal and community scrutiny that could have the effect of cleaning up North Texas air.

A recent study by scientists Ahmadi Mahdi and John Kuruvilla of University of North Texas found that the worst-performing air monitoring sites in North Texas are all in the Barnett Shale and heavily influenced by pollution from oil and gas facilities. (Published by the National Institutes of Health on PubMed.gov.) 

TCEQ has not required cuts in oil and gas related emissions,

The federal “haze rule” calls for TCEQ to take action on behalf of park lands. Aimed at keeping the air of federal park lands clean and clear, the haze rule requires its own state implementation plan. Texas’ 2009 plan would have restored the wide open skies over Big Bend National Park to clear visibility in about 140 years. Now the EPA has stepped in and proposed a plan that requires pollution cuts from coal-fired power plants that fuel the haze.  


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