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As EPA delays smog rules, San Antonio moves to cut emissions

By , Staff WriterUpdated
Traffic in the downtown area on Friday, Aug. 12, 2016. The ozone levels in San Antonio's statistics causes 52 premature deaths per year according to a new public health study by New York University and the American Thoracic Society. (Kin Man Hui/San Antonio Express-News)
Traffic in the downtown area on Friday, Aug. 12, 2016. The ozone levels in San Antonio's statistics causes 52 premature deaths per year according to a new public health study by New York University and the American Thoracic Society. (Kin Man Hui/San Antonio Express-News)Kin Man Hui, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

San Antonio is proceeding with a campaign to cut smog-forming emissions in the wake of the Trump Administration’s announcement that it plans to delay 2015 ozone rules by a year.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt announced late Tuesday the slowdown in the process of determining which cities, counties and metropolitan areas violate the ozone rule. Texas and other states remain locked in a court battle with the EPA after suing over the rule in 2015.

Bexar County’s long-term ozone average is now at 71 parts per billion, a hair above the 70 parts per billion standard, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Faced with uncertainty about the rule’s future in the wake of the election, the City Council decided to look for solutions here in San Antonio, said Doug Melnick, city’s sustainability director.

“Council was very clear last year,” he said. “We need to do something; we need to get ahead.”

Ozone, the key component of smog, forms when emissions from power plants, industrial sites, vehicle tailpipes and volatile chemicals like paint react to sunlight. It irritates and damages the lungs and most severely affects people with asthma and other chronic conditions.

The city’s Office of Sustainability and Metropolitan Health District are working on a study about the health effects of the area’s ozone levels to be released in July, said Melnick and special projects manager Liza Meyer. The study will focus on ozone effects by age, race, neighborhood and socioeconomic level, they said.

“I think it’s important to recognize the equity factor,” Meyer said. “We want clean air for everybody. Breathing shouldn’t be a privilege. Every neighborhood should have access to clean and healthy air.”

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A study last year by New York University and the American Thoracic Society estimated that ozone in the San Antonio area is to blame for 52 preventable deaths — and 182,000 days of missing work or school — per year.

The city will also hold a series of roundtables with businesses and industry groups. Other than CPS Energy power plants, industrial sources like cement plants and the Toyota plant are some of the largest single emitters of smog-forming pollution in the San Antonio metro area.

Melnick said the city has not, so far, secured any specific new commitments to reduce pollution from any businesses.

Cars and trucks account for another sizable chunk of local emissions. Last year, Bexar County, Leon Valley and San Antonio all passed anti-idling ordinances.

The campaign will also focus on education through blogger meet-ups, neighborhood events, social media postings and print and digital advertising. The Alamo Area Council of Governments has also been trying to promote cleaner commuting with the help of NuRide and VIA’s vanpool service.

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San Antonio remains the only major city still in compliance with smog rules in Texas, a state that has strongly resisted the 2015 ozone rule.

In a September letter to the EPA, Gov. Greg Abbott named Bexar County along with 20 other urban counties in violation of the rule, but only reluctantly.

“The ozone rule should be vacated because it is unlawful as both a constitutional and statutory matter,” the letter stated. “However, because the ozone rule has not yet been stayed or vacated, I am enclosing the... recommendation.”

Pruitt seems sympathetic to those arguments, pledging during his Senate confirmation hearing to take a lighter approach with states when it comes to environmental regulations.

“States have made tremendous progress and significant investment cleaning up the air,” Pruitt said in a statement Tuesday. “We will continue to work with states to ensure they are on a path to compliance.”

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bgibbons@express-news.net

Twitter: @bgibbs

|Updated

Brendan Gibbons covers the environment and water for the San Antonio Express-News. He joined the staff in October 2015 after two years of environmental reporting at The Times-Tribune in Scranton, Pennsylvania. A native of Grand Junction, Colorado, Brendan earned a degree in science journalism at the University of Missouri in 2013. He has worked as a copy editor for an English-language news site in Vietnam and as a staff writer for the online magazine Practical eCommerce. Other odd jobs included a stint as a science aide monitoring birds for the U.S. Forest Service and as an office assistant for a plant science lab in Missouri.