State to ditch no-drive days

By BILL DAWSON

July 21, 2000 Web posted at: 11:05 AM EDT (1505 GMT)

In this story: Cars, lawnmowers targeted Opposition from industry RELATED STORIES

HOUSTON, Texas (The Houston Chronicle) -- State officials will recommend today that Houston's sweeping new smog-reduction plan include lower speed limits, stricter tailpipe tests, deep cuts in industrial pollution and a morning ban on the use of much construction and lawn equipment.

Houston has decided against no-drive days as a way to cut smog

But they are not recommending "no-drive days" or other such restrictions to reduce vehicle use -- a highly controversial possibility that also had been considered.

The plan -- which still must be approved by Texas' three environmental commissioners -- will launch the latest and largest-ever attack on a regional smog problem that has ranked among the nation's worst for decades. And despite major reductions over the years in ground-level ozone, smog's chief ingredient, the Houston area last year reached the undesirable status of having the nation's worst ozone record.

That distinction drew a barrage of stinging national publicity for Houston and political criticism for Gov. George W. Bush.

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Jeff Saitas, executive director of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, whose staff will publish the smog proposal today, alluded to that negative attention late Thursday when he revealed its long-awaited contents.

"We have been challenged across the country and the state to develop a plan to clean the air," Saitas said. "A lot of people felt we wouldn't go through the hard decision-making process to do it."

Saitas said the TNRCC staff recommendations represent "a very sincere effort to come up with a plan containing an extremely difficult set of (pollution) reductions to bring clean air to Houston and allow continued economic development."

He said he hopes Houston-area residents recognize the difficulty of TNRCC's job but acknowledged that he expects "a strong reaction" at public hearings in September.

He and other TNRCC officials stressed that this set of recommendations could change or grow -- perhaps before the commissioners formally propose a smog plan on Aug. 9, and certainly before they adopt a final version in December.

Saitas expressed confidence that the plan's many pollution cuts will be enough to reduce ozone below a federal health-protection limit by the 2007 deadline in the 1990 Clean Air Act, and said he hopes it therefore satisfies the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But other TNRCC officials admitted that they still have not finished calculations -- which they had said would also be released today -- that revise earlier projections of how much pollution their recommendations would eliminate.

Last year, the EPA stipulated that the plan must remove a staggering 75 percent of the area's emissions of nitrogen oxide, a combustion byproduct that mixes in sunlight with various chemical gases to yield ozone, a respiratory irritant.

To make that happen, state officials and local air pollution experts have long warned, will require measures affecting all three major sources of nitrogen oxide. They are the area's millions of cars and trucks, "offroad" vehicles like construction equipment, and dozens of major industrial plants, which comprise the region's biggest pollution source.

To reduce automotive pollution, the TNRCC staff's recommendations will include reducing highway speed limits to 55 mph on May 1, 2002, in all eight Houston-area counties that Congress targeted. They are Harris, Brazoria, Galveston, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Chambers, Liberty and Waller.

Strict new tailpipe tests are also recommended for all eight counties on a phased-in basis, to be conducted at service stations and other automotive businesses.

Now, emission checks are done only on cars and light trucks in Harris County as part of their annual safety inspection.

This test, conducted while vehicles idle, would be replaced by a new test using a treadmill-type device to simulate various driving conditions. Newer models' computerized diagnostic equipment would also be checked.

The Harris County tests would add the diagnostic equipment next January and the treadmill device in 2002. Both would be employed, starting in 2003, in Brazoria, Galveston, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties. The remaining counties would follow in 2004.

Another recommendation affecting the general public, as well as landscaping businesses, would be a ban on the use of gasoline-powered lawn equipment between 6 a.m. and noon, starting in 2005.

The aim, state officials have said, would be to delay some of those emissions, because sunlight and heat foster the chemical pollution reactions that produce ozone.

The biggest single pollution cut in the TNRCC staff's recommendation requires local industrial plants to reduce their nitrogen oxide releases by an average of 90 percent.

The Greater Houston Partnership's Business Coalition for Clean Air has said that only about a 75 percent cut is now technically feasible, but Saitas decided to stick with the 90 percent figure that the TNRCC staff had suggested earlier.

Likewise, the staff's recommendations contain two other items already hotly opposed by business groups. They are a morning ban on the use of heavy construction equipment and a 90 percent reduction in emissions by airlines' ground-support vehicles.

Both those measures, included in a smog plan the TNRCC adopted earlier this year for the Dallas-Fort Worth area, are being challenged by industry lawsuits.

In the case of all those proposals -- affecting industrial plants, construction equipment and airlines -- Saitas said the agency welcomes alternative suggestions to achieve the same pollution cuts.

The construction equipment ban, for instance, would not take effect until 2005 under the TNRCC staff recommendation.

And Saitas said the airport rule can be dropped if other airlines follow the example of a recent agreement by Continental Airlines and the city of Houston to cut emissions at Bush Intercontinental Airport.

The staff recommendations also include numerous other items, such as measures to mandate the sale of cleaner-burning gasoline and diesel fuel, idling restrictions for large trucks, and various mass transit and other traffic-reducing steps to be chosen by local officials.

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