The Obama administration last week proposed the toughest ozone limits in history in an effort to clean up dirty air nationwide.
While we support a push for cleaner air — who doesn’t? — it’s also clear to us that the standards being contemplated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be virtually impossible for Front Range counties to meet.
Ken Lloyd, executive director for the Regional Air Quality Council, told us that the lower end of the range being contemplated is “close to background” levels in this area.
Indeed, the area isn’t even meeting the 2008 standards adopted by the Bush administration that were broadly panned as being out of step with scientific recommendations for stricter limits.
The trouble is, most of the easy fixes already have been made. Catalytic converters, required in new cars since 1975, took a big bite out of the pollutants that form ozone. Recently, the federal government boosted fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and that will help too.
But EPA projections show that if the government adopts a new standard somewhere in the middle of the range it has proposed, four Colorado counties still would fail to meet the standards in 2020 — Arapahoe, Douglas, Jefferson and Larimer. If the EPA goes with the strictest limit, add five more counties to the list, including Denver and Boulder.
That’s for the more populated areas already being monitored, but the EPA is proposing extending the monitoring to non-urban areas, so expect that list to grow.
So what stick does the government wield if counties don’t meet the standard? The government could conceivably withhold federal highway funds or refuse to permit industry to be located in the region.
But that just doesn’t happen. What happens is that areas are required to develop a plan that spells out strategies for meeting the standards. “You have to at least make an attempt to develop the plans,” Lloyd told us.
So, areas go ’round and ’round with the federal government, making plans and often failing to get to the lower numbers.
The current standard is 0.075 parts per million. The EPA is proposing reducing that to a level between 0.06 and 0.07 parts per million, a range recommended by the EPA’s panel of science advisers, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.
Ozone is formed when sunlight bakes nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide and methane. Its public health implications include reduced lung function, increased frequency of asthma attacks and significant risks for people with lung disease.
If you’ve ever tried to say, go for a run on a high-ozone day, you might have noticed shortness of breath or lung irritation.
Reducing ozone is, no doubt, a valuable public health goal. Getting there, however, is the problem. Will it require a new fleet of zero-emission cars? Driving to work only every other day? A total conversion to nuclear power plants?
And at what cost?
While we support the EPA’s reliance on science to make determinations such as this one, the Obama administration also must be realistic and forthright about what it will take to meet them.
