Protecting Health & the Environment

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Letting Dirty Trucks Glide Past Pollution Protections

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The White House agency in charge of reviewing regulations, the U.S. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), conspired with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to circumvent important rulemaking requirements – and ram through a deregulatory giveaway to “glider” trucks, which are super-polluting diesel freight trucks created by dropping old, dirty truck engines into new truck bodies. If allowed to go forward, this loophole for the trucking industry will pollute our air and harm children’s health.

The story begins several years ago when, under the Obama administration, the EPA applied its new, cleaner emissions standards to glider trucks. When the Trump administration took power, former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt attempted to exempt glider trucks from the Obama era emission standards as a handout to the industry that makes them. The EPA’s Inspector General (IG) is already investigating the EPA’s role in this tawdry tale, but new reporting makes clear that the White House’s role in this incident needs to be investigated as well.

When Public Citizen examined the glider truck carve-out, we discovered potential manipulation of the EPA’s rulemaking process, as outlined in testimony to the EPA’s scientific advisory board in 2018, before the IG investigation was requested. From documents publicly available at the time, we found that the EPA intentionally avoided conducting certain analyses to conceal the harmful health impacts of allowing dirtier emissions from glider trucks, especially on children.

U.S. Senate Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee reached a similar conclusion in December 2018 and requested that the EPA’s IG investigate the agency’s process for repealing cleaner emissions standards for glider trucks.

Now, newly released documents show that EPA’s IG is almost certain to confirm our suspicions: that the agency knowingly refused to do numerous analyses on the harmful impacts of its carve-out for glider trucks that normally are required when taking this type of regulatory action.

Usually, an agency’s attempt to skirt analytical requirements runs into problems when the regulation is sent to OIRA, the small office in the White House that is tasked with reviewing and approving certain regulations and their accompanying analyses.

But the new documents show that OIRA acted as an accomplice, helping the EPA flout the analytical requirements. In fact, it looks like OIRA deliberately fast-tracked the glider trucks carve-out by allowing the EPA to bypass analyses that are required for exemptions from new emissions standards.

A few weeks ago, a Bloomberg Law reporter broke the story that former EPA head Pruitt received a handwritten letter from a former Republican congresswoman from Tennessee asking for the glider carve-out. One of the largest glider truck manufacturers is based in her district.

The story, based on EPA documents obtained by the reporter through a Freedom of Information Act request, confirmed strong suspicions that the EPA was lowering the emissions standards for glider trucks as a political favor to the congresswoman and the glider manufacturer.

Buried within the hundreds of pages of documents were emails from staff at both the EPA and OIRA showing both agencies colluding to rush through the glider truck carve-out by skipping the required analyses.

OIRA was created under President Ronald Reagan to review and approve the most important and impactful regulations from federal agencies. But since its founding, OIRA generally has opposed strong regulations that protect the public while favoring deregulation.

This incident is just the latest example.

The reason the EPA sent its glider trucks carve-out to OIRA in the first place is because the regulation was classified as an “economically significant” regulation. In other words, the EPA (correctly) believed that the regulation would have major economic impacts. Such rules have to be reviewed by OIRA.

When a rulemaking is classified as “economically significant,” in addition to putting it under OIRA review, it also normally triggers a requirement to assess its potential costs and benefits. And when it’s a rulemaking from the EPA, this designation also triggers the requirement to look at the public health impacts on children and minorities. All of these analyses ultimately would need to be reviewed by OIRA as it does its review of a rule.

Yet the EPA sent OIRA the glider truck rulemaking without any of the required analyses. In fact, the regulation had virtually no evidence to support it. Moreover, the EPA did nothing to refute its earlier findings from the Obama administration that exempting glider trucks from clean air standards would lead to enormous amounts of harmful pollution that would negatively impact vulnerable populations.

Normally, OIRA would have rejected the regulation and told the EPA to do the supporting analyses before allowing the EPA even to propose the rulemaking. Under the Obama administration, OIRA never hesitated to hold up regulations, often for years, while it insisted agencies provide more information and analyses to justify regulations.

As emails between the EPA and OIRA show, OIRA allowed the EPA to change the designation of the glider truck regulation from “economically significant” to merely “significant” to let the EPA propose the carve-out without having to do the various analyses required of “economically significant” rules.

This was the very last change the EPA made to the regulation before OIRA ended its review of the regulation and approved EPA to propose it publicly. OIRA wanted the change in order to cover its tracks, since leaving the regulation as “economically significant” would have led to questions as to why the typical analyses that accompany “economically significant” regulations had not been done by EPA.

One of the email subject lines from an EPA staffer reads, “RE: last minute significance change request from OMB.” While the content of the email is redacted, the subject line clearly indicates that OIRA (housed within OMB) requested that the EPA change the significance designation of the regulation.

Subsequent emails dispel any doubt that this occurred.

One email from an EPA staffer to other high-level EPA political appointees reads, “we just received word from OMB that they have cleared the Glider NPRM (with the change from “economically significant” to “significant”).” In other words, OMB cleared the change in the rulemaking’s designation from “economically significant” to “significant.”

Another internal EPA email makes clear that OMB requested the change, “…given that OMB was the one proposing the change be made from ‘economically significant’ to ‘significant…’”

Interestingly, this email chain also contained an email from an EPA career staffer with the subject line, “Why the draft glider repeal NPRM is Economically Significant.” This indicates that the EPA’s career staff believed the proper classification for the glider truck exemption would be an “economically significant” regulation.

These emails should lead the EPA’s IG to conclude that agency violated basic requirements in the regulatory process in trying to exempt glider trucks from pollution standards. With OIRA’s help, the EPA deliberately mischaracterized its carve-out for glider trucks to make it look like it was complying with requirements in the rulemaking process, when in fact it was not.

This raises profound concerns about the integrity of both the EPA’s rulemaking process, which already has come under close scrutiny due to numerous lapses under the Trump administration, as well as the integrity of OIRA’s regulatory review process.

A top to bottom audit of the EPA’s rulemaking process and OIRA’s regulatory review process might reveal that this incident is just the tip of the iceberg.

fracking

Caught in the Crosshairs of Corporate Power. Part 3: Fracking Pollution

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This is part three of a five part series.

When political candidates spend their time begging for cash from wealthy interests and legislating to prioritize private profits over the public good, regular people lose out. The corporations and superrich donors that dominate our elections have an outsized influence over who wins, what gets discussed in campaigns and what legislative ideas receive serious consideration.

The sweeping legislative package known as the For the People Act (H.R. 1) contains ethics, campaign finance and voting rights reforms that are essential to make our government work effectively and fairly.

To illustrate the need for reforms that reduce corporate influence and redistribute power to the people, Public Citizen compiled stories of five regular Americans whose lives have been impacted by corporate political power.

Corporate Power Spotlight: Fracking Pollution

“How do you as a landowner stand a chance when the industry wrote the law?”

– Ronald Gulla, 63, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania

With more than six years of experience working for oil and gas businesses, Ron Gulla thought he understood the industry. In 2002, he signed a lease to allow drilling on his farm. That lease would later be acquired by Range Resources, a major fracking corporation based in Texas. When drilling began in 2005, Gulla found himself mired in a toxic mess.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves in drilling deep into the earth and injecting the wells with millions of gallons of water, sand and other chemicals to break apart underground shale rock and release the gas.

“Range Resources says ‘Drilling is just the beginning’,” said Gulla. “Well, the spilling is also the beginning.”

Pennsylvania. Attorney General Josh Shapiro is overseeing a grand jury investigation into alleged environmental crimes in Washington County, Pa. — an investigation which reportedly includes alleged wrongdoing by Range Resources.

Over three years, four gas wells were drilled on Gulla’s farm in Washington County, Pa, about 30 miles west of Pittsburgh. The nearest drilling rig was 600 feet away. The road the drillers built used mill slag – a byproduct of steel manufacturing often seen piled up in black heaps near steel mills – in order to access one of the rig was just 150 feet away.

When it rained, Gulla recalls water running off of the drillers’ road, through the slag and into his family’s water well. “That mill slag is toxic,” said Gulla. “There’s arsenic in it, there’s pieces of railroad tie in it, which has creosote [a toxic substance]. It has metal in it and plastic and all kinds of garbage. If you go and buy slag, it tells you right there on the back of it, don’t breathe the dust. It’s bad stuff.”

Gulla’s family immediately stopped drinking the discolored well water. “Two years or so down the road, I noticed while brushing my teeth that the water got a really strong metallic taste to it.”

Gulla also saw fracking wastewater from well pads – the small industrial sites where the drilling workers operated the rigs – flowing directly onto soil and into a stream. He saw the vegetation in the fish pond downhill from the well pads turn yellow and die. Then fish died. So did deer and neighboring cattle.

Black water bubbled and flowed from outside the well casing at the drill site near Gulla’s pond, he said. A water test in 2009 showed high levels of volatile organic compounds known as BTEXes – benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene. “All that was going into the pond,” said Gulla. “That’s what was killing everything. They’re all carcinogens. They’re deadly. You don’t want to be exposed to this stuff. And they were exposing us.”

In 2005, President George W. Bush signed into law the Energy Policy Act, which contained provisions, infamously dubbed the “Halliburton loophole,” exempting the fracking industry from essential antipollution regulation.

But environmental groups have been unable to convince lawmakers to eliminate the loophole. Their many years of efforts have so far been blocked due to the industry’s stranglehold on Congress. Gulla sees the outsized role of big money in American politics as a key reason: “Everything comes back to Citizens United,” Gulla said, referring to the 2010 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court allowing corporations to spend as much as they want to influence elections.

“There is no way on God’s green earth I would have signed the lease if I had known they were going to be exempt from the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. And the Safe Drinking Water Act. And the Right to Know, and the Superfund Act,” said Gulla. “When I worked in this industry, they were not exempt.”

He added: “How do you as a landowner stand a chance when the industry wrote the law?”

CORPORATE INFLUENCE AT WORK

The oil and gas industry uses its political influence to secure policies to block environmental and public protections and suppress development of the renewable energy sources that are essential for averting catastrophic climate change.

KEY FACTS:

The oil and gas industry has:

  • Spent more than $1.5 billion on lobbying in Washington since 2008.
  • Contributed more than $297 million in campaign money to Congress over the past 30 years.
  • Contributed 79 percent to Congressional Republicans and 21 percent to Congressional Democrats.

SOURCE: Center for Responsive Politics.

Under former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, whose election and re-election campaigns received millions from the oil and gas industry, lawmakers enacted the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which had its origins in Cheney’s infamous energy task force that met in secret with energy company lobbyists. This bill secured billions in subsidies and regulatory rollbacks – including exemptions for fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Legislation to close the loopholes, which have been introduced and collectively dubbed the “Frack Pack” have not advanced. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry continues to gush donations on lawmakers that block progress on renewables. A recent Huffington Post analysis finds that senators who have not co-sponsored the Green New Deal legislation, which would move to end U.S. reliance on polluting fossil fuels for energy, receive an average of seven times more in contributions from the oil and gas industry.

LOBBYING AND CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS:

Top Senate recipients of oil and gas contributions include U.S. senators from Texas, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn (more than $3 million each over the course of their careers). Former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) each received more than $2 million from the industry. In the House, former Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who served as chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee and infamously apologized to BP for how the government treated the oil giant after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, received more than $2 million from the industry, more than any other House member.

African Dust Storms, Air Pollution, and Exceptional Events

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As if the relentless heat wasn’t enough this summer, Austin is experiencing hazy skies due to an African dust cloud originating in the Saharan desert. The dust was most noticeable on Sunday, July 1. The technical term for this dust is “fine particulate matter,” particles that are so small they can travel from our lungs into our blood stream, causing health problems. An individual particle is 1/20th the width of a human hair. 

The Clean Air Act establishes standards for fine particulate matter (also known as “PM2.5” because it is 2.5 microns in diameter) in the air we breathe. PM2.5 is measured in micrograms per meter cubed, a measurement of how much material is found in a given volume of air. The Environmental Protection Agency has established limits of PM2.5 at 35 μg/m³ in a 24 hour period and 12 μg/m³ in an annual average. If an air monitor exceeds that level of PM2.5, then the region it monitors risks being designated in “nonattainment” of the federal standard. There are currently no areas in Texas in nonattainment of the PM2.5 standard, though there are several areas in nonattainment of the ozone pollution standard.

Unfortunately, the Austin area got very close to violating the PM2.5 standard on Sunday. The table below lists hourly monitor values at the Zavala air monitor in Austin (you can see a map of all the air monitors in Texas here). As you can see, the 24-hour average of monitor values at Zavala on July 1 was 32.5 μg/m³, very close to the EPA’s standard of 35 μg/m³.

Data available from TCEQ. 

This does not mean, though, that Austin risks falling out of attainment of the fine particulate matter standard. There are a few reasons for this. First, measuring compliance with the standard is a complex calculation that involves averaging three years of air monitoring data. Second–and more importantly for air quality this week–African dust is considered an “exceptional event” that would be excluded from the data anyway.

An exceptional event is an air pollution event that is excluded from the data because it meets certain criteria. The EPA establishes the criteria for an air pollution event to be considered exceptional. These criteria include that “the event is associated with a measured concentration in excess of normal historical fluctuations, including background.” 40 CFR § 50.14(c)(3)(iv) (emphasis added).

African dust has been reaching Texas since time immemorial, and the impact of these events on air quality in Texas is absolutely part of the normal historical fluctuations of weather and air quality. In fact, the phenomenon was first identified by a noted historical figure, Charles Darwin, during his famous trip aboard the H.M.S. Beagle in 1833.

You might think that the considerable historical record on African dust events would cause EPA to reject their exclusion from the data on the basis that they are, after all, well within “normal historical fluctuations.” You would be wrong. The truth is that Texas has a long history of claiming exceptional events that include African dust storms. Other typical exceptional events in Texas include agricultural fires in Mexico (as old as agriculture) and ozone pollution blowing in from other countries (also Mexico, also old).

Why does this matter? Most importantly, air pollution is linked to public health. Children, the elderly, and people with respiratory ailments such as asthma and COPD are particularly vulnerable to air pollution. We have to keep our air clean to keep ourselves healthy. But nonattainment designations have consequences for a region that can last for decades and cost billions of dollars. Houston and Dallas, for example, have been trying to get into attainment of the ozone standard for decade. It’s why we have emissions tests for our cars, and why we can’t build a new factory without reducing pollution from an existing one. The consequences are so great precisely because the impact on human health is so serious. Asthma is the number one cause of school absences. Globally 7 million people die each year from air pollution.

So the purpose of a nonattainment designation is to make our air healthier and protect ourselves and our children. Unfortunately, in Texas, the focus is on avoiding nonattainment designations and their consequences to big business. Several times in the last few years, Texas has used the exceptional events rule to keep areas artificially in attainment of air pollution standards. In 2013, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality plainly stated that it was excluding enough exceptional events from Houston’s data to keep the area from being desingated under the fine particulate matter standard. Several air quality advocates (including myself) objected to this move. We even pointed to Charles Darwin’s observations as evidence that Texas could not exclude African dust events from its data.

Our objections were ignored by Texas and EPA. The result today is that thousands of people are breathing air that does not meet federal pollution standards. Their health will suffer as a result. Some people will even die. There are quantifiable consequences to these decisions, and they are measured in human lives.

Since the 2013 move to avoid designating Houston as not meeting the PM2.5 standard, several other exception event exclusions have kept areas of Texas artificially in attainment of pollution standards. El Paso doesn’t meet the ozone standard, but exceptional events blamed on Mexico in 2015 have helped the area to avoid a nonattainment designation. More recently, the failure to designate San Antonio as not meeting the ozone pollution standard was blamed on ozone transport from other regions.

In some cases, Texas is using the law correctly to exclude exceptional events. (Houston’s lack of a PM2.5 designation is not one of these cases. We still maintain that it was done improperly and in violation of the exceptional events rule and the spirit of the Clean Air Act.) But even if the state is legally correct in its maneuvers, it’s doing so at the cost of human health. When the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality relies on tricks of data manipulation to avoid federal scrutiny, it is prioritizing business interests over people. A nonattainment designation has consequences for business and industry: old plants have to clean up, new plants have to invest in clean tech. These consequences do reach into the billions of dollars. The total cost of compliance with the Clean Air Act in 2020 is estimated to be $65 billion. But the health benefits of cleaner air in 2020 is estimated at $2 trillion. That’s a return on investment of more than 30 to 1.

Notably, more and more of our air pollution is coming from vehicles. When you register your vehicle, you pay a fee that is used in part to reduce vehicle pollution. When you get your car inspected and make any improvements needed to meet emissions standards, you are investing in clean air. Texas makes sure that you pay your fair share of the cost of reducing air pollution, and you should be happy to do so. After all, it is an investment in your health and your children’s future.

So why does Texas keeping fighting against Clean Air Act regulation? It’s a question of priorities. Much of the cost of compliance is born by industry, especially the oil and gas industry. That’s a powerful lobby in Texas, far more powerful than children who can’t go to school because of chronic asthma attacks. Texas is willing to skirt some regulations in order to save money for industry. It isn’t willing to invest in environmental improvements that pay huge dividends to its people in the long term.

Industry profits today, or public health tomorrow. Texas has made its choice. What’s yours?

Rick Perry’s Bailout for Coal, Nuclear Companies Defies Common Sense

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Today’s inexpensive wholesale electricity prices provide significant benefits for consumers, while preserving the power grid’s reliability.  The only losers are those who own inefficient coal and nuclear power plants that have been rendered uneconomic by cheaper, cleaner, safer and more sustainable power generation.

So what do economically failing owners of coal and nuclear power plants do? They conjure a new marketing buzzword – “resilience” – in a desperate effort to force consumers to pay for some sort of fictional attribute that their power plants supposedly provide.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, attempting to create what Vox called a “fake grid crisis,”  is giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission until Jan. 10 to finalize his grid plan, meant to boost coal and nuclear power plants, after FERC’s new chairman, Kevin McIntyre, requested a 30-day extension. Perry said FERC’s inability to meet the original Dec. 11 deadline means that “the security of the nation’s electric grid will continue to be at risk.”

McIntyre’s decision to postpone action for 30 days on the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) multibillion-dollar bailout of uneconomic coal and nuclear power plants doesn’t go nearly far enough. The factual record overwhelmingly demonstrates that FERC simply should dismiss the entire proceeding.

If our grid were truly at risk by the closure of failing coal and nuclear plants, then any delay of action would be reckless. The fact remains that the retirement of uneconomical coal and nuclear does not threaten the reliability of our national grid.

The disingenuous rationale for propping up these power plants has been dismissed time and again. It is outrageous that Perry continues to perpetuate this lie and that FERC continues to entertain this cockamamie proposal.

While condemnation of the Department of Energy bailout has been comprehensive and bipartisan, Public Citizen predicts that FERC’s next move in this fiasco poses a bigger threat to consumers: offering rival “market-based” bailout plans crafted by America’s largest private market operator, PJM, which serves mid-Atlantic states.

While the near-universal denunciation of Perry’s bailout has focused on its cost-of-service bailout remedy, a clever “bait-and-switch” is occurring, promoted by PJM and sponsored by Exelon Corp. While Washington, D.C. was losing its collective mind (rightfully so!) over Perry’s audacious coal bailout  last month PJM quietly unveiled a supposed “market-based” alternative: a “price formation” revamp that will require consumers to pay billions of dollars each year in new capacity payments to owners of power generation.

PJM’s Independent Market Monitor attacked this financial windfall for nuclear and coal generators, accusing the RTO of doing Exelon’s bidding in crafting the price formation proposal.

As Public Citizen has been predicting for months, FERC’s likely course of action will be to reject the DOE’s cost-of-service bailout in favor of PJM’s market-based bailout simply because of the “market-friendly” marketing PJM employs.

PJM’s constant rejiggering of its capacity markets – reflected yet again in its “price formation” offer – is evidence of its accommodation of its powerful members like Exelon. PJM’s “market-based” bailout isn’t any better than Perry’s cost-of-service giveaway just because PJM dresses up its bailouts in difficult-to-understand pseudo-economic jargon. Consumers are impacted exactly the same whether it’s a cost-of-service or a “market-based” bailout.

The problem is that, as with so many other Federal Power Act authorities, FERC appears ready to substitute consideration of Perry’s plan for PJM’s, thereby putting PJM in the drivers’ seat of designing and implementing billions of dollars in giveaways for Exelon, Vistra-Dynegy and NRG.

Independent Market Monitor  has implied that PJM, rather than acting as a “neutral” arbiter of administrating the market, is actually acting behind the scenes to benefit Exelon.

Because PJM is a private organization, there is little to no transparency in its operations. And while PJM is overseeing a “stakeholder” process to allegedly consider its price formation proposal, the RTO is structured to allow PJM to bypass this stakeholder process and offer its price formation bailout directly to FERC.

Given the billions of dollars a year at stake, FERC must immediately open a public, evidentiary hearing into the players involved in developing and promoting PJM’s price formation fiasco, especially given the public accusation by Independent Market Monitor that PJM’s plan was offered to help Exelon Corp. FERC is the only entity with the authority to regulate PJM, and that oversight must include an investigation into what role, if any, Exelon played in shaping PJM’s price formation proposal.

 

Tyson Slocum is Director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. Follow him on Twitter @TysonSlocum

Governor Abbott Rejects Clean Air for Austin

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Map of air monitoring sites in Austin. Light blue sites monitor for ozone.

On June 12, Governor Greg Abbott signed a $217 billion budget for Texas into law. Abbott also exercised line-item vetoes to eliminate $120 million from the budget. Among those cuts were $87 million for the Low-Income Vehicle Repair Assistance Program, a voluntary program that helps low-income Texans replace their old, polluting vehicles with newer ones.

Continuing the assault on clean air, Abbott also cut $6 million for air quality planning in certain areas of the state (see pdf p. 5). The governor’s comment on this funding cut is worth quoting in full, beginning with the item vetoed and then the comment in italics:

  1. Air Quality Planning. Amounts appropriated above include $6,000,500 for the biennium out of the Clean Air Account No. 151 in Strategy A.1.1, Air Quality Assessment and Planning, for air quality planning activities to reduce ozone in areas not designated as nonattainment areas during the 2016 17 biennium and as approved by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). These areas may include Waco, El Paso, Beaumont, Austin, Corpus Christi, Granbury, Killeen Temple, Longview Tyler Marshall, San Antonio, and Victoria. These activities may be carried out through interlocal agreements and may include: identifying, inventorying, and monitoring of pollution levels; modeling pollution levels; and the identification, quantification, implementation of appropriate locally enforceable pollution reduction controls; and the submission of work plans to be submitted to the TCEQ. The TCEQ shall allocate $350,000 to each area and the remaining funds to each area based on population in excess of 350,000. The grant recipients shall channel the funds to those projects most useful for the State Implementation Plan (SIP).

This program funds, among other items, bicycle use programs, carpooling awareness, environmental awareness campaigns, and locally enforceable pollution reduction programs in near non-attainment areas, which can be funded at the local government level. Resources in the Clean Air Account should be prioritized to directly address problems in our non-attainment areas of the state so that we are better positioned to combat the business-stifling regulations imposed on these areas by the Environmental Protection Agency. I therefore object to and disapprove of this appropriation.

This is an unfortunate description of air quality planning activities and of the purpose of the Clean Air Account itself. So what are “air quality planning activities to reduce ozone in areas not designated as nonattainment areas”?

Ozone is a harmful pollutant that is linked to everything from asthma attacks and difficulty breathing to heart attacks, stroke, and premature death. Ozone is formed in the atmosphere through the mixing of other pollutants that are emitted by vehicles and industrial sources such as refineries. There are two areas of the state—Houston, and Dallas—that do not meet the federal air pollution standards for ozone. These are our “nonattainment” areas. There are many other areas in the state—including San Antonio and Austin—that do meet the federal ozone standard but still have numerous bad ozone days throughout the year. These areas, especially San Antonio, risk worsening air quality and an eventual “nonattainment designation” by the Environmental Protection Agency. Such a designation would subject the area to decades of regulation and costs that could reach the billions.

All of us have seen the ozone action day announcements.  Those alert at-risk citizens (like children, the elderly and those who have certain health risks) to curtail their outside exposure to mitigate the negative health impacts.  Local air quality monitors are what alert us to those dangers.

In order to keep the “near-nonattainment” areas clean and healthy (and to avoid the federal designation), Texas appropriates several million dollars for air quality planning activities. This money enables these areas to participate in programs like the ozone Early Action Compact. So far, these programs have been successful, though San Antonio may inevitably face a nonattainment designation as it grows.

Surely Governor Abbott understands the importance and success of these air quality planning activities. Describing the program as consisting of “bicycle use programs, carpooling awareness, environmental awareness campaigns, and locally enforceable pollution reduction programs” is an obvious straw man. Bicycle and carpooling programs—while important in their own right—are not all that goes into air quality planning.

Air quality planners in Houston demonstrate how that city’s air monitors operate.

In Austin, for example, the city maintains eight ozone monitors in addition to the two maintained by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). These additional monitors help with air quality forecasting. They also help us to better understand large-scale impacts on air quality to our region by sources such as the Fayette power plant to the southeast, or Dallas to the north.

San Antonio just announced that it will shut down six ozone air monitors and lay off four staff members in response to the governor’s cuts. This is truly unfortunate for the people affected and for air quality monitoring and pollution prevention. If data is never collected, the ability to paint long-term pictures and identify trends in air pollution is lost for that time period. San Antonio may one day refund its program, but its former employees will have moved on, and the data will have been lost forever.

On the same day, San Antonio made this announcement, the Central Texas Clean Air Coalition in Austin held an emergency meeting to discuss how it would respond to the proposed funding cuts. The Capital Area Council of Governments (CAPCOG) has asked its member counties and cities to consider an additional financial contribution to support ongoing air quality planning activities in Austin. CAPCOG proposed tiered levels of funding that would alternatively fund more or less the region’s activities.

At the meeting, CAPCOG members seemed to understand the importance of a funding level that would keep all staff in place and all air monitors active. Cuts will definitely have to be made (to, for example, the regular maintenance schedule for those monitors) but if CAPCOG’s members do approve the appropriate tier of funding, then air quality planning programs in Austin will remain largely intact.

We hope that Austin is able to continue its important work by keeping Austinites safe from dangerous ozone pollution. Governor Greg Abbott may not recognize the importance of this work right now, but we hope that he does some day and that these shortsighted cuts do not continue.

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