Environment & Nature
Bexar County’s Air Officially Too Polluted To Meet EPA’s Ozone Standard
By 
Brendan Gibbons |
Bonnie Arbittier / Rivard Report
Bexar County has failed to meet air quality standards set by the EPA.
Ending San Antonio's run as the largest clean-air city in the country, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday officially designated Bexar County's air too polluted to meet a federal standard for ozone.
The EPA's decision means stricter regulation of San Antonio's air quality. The regulation is meant to within three years return ozone pollution to a level that will safeguard people with chronic lung conditions and prevent more illnesses from developing.
That will likely increase costs on new or expanding industrial businesses and change the way local governments plan transportation projects.
“We look forward to supporting Texas as they work to improve air quality and foster economic opportunity,” acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a prepared statement. “Information provided by the state indicates that the San Antonio area is on the path toward attainment, and we expect Bexar County will be able to demonstrate that it meets the standard well in advance of the attainment date in 2021."
The EPA has only designated Bexar County as needing additional regulation, with air quality in seven neighboring counties still deemed clean enough to meet the standard. Some local officials have said that would give an economic advantage to San Antonio's neighbors, whose vehicles and other emission sources add to the pollution in Bexar County's air.
In a statement Wednesday, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said the agency's decision would prove extremely costly to residents.
"The EPA ignored a long track record of improving air quality in Bexar County," Wolff said. "We are extremely disappointed and will examine every possible remedy."
Bonnie Arbittier / Rivard Report
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff.
Ozone – three oxygen atoms bound together – is a type of pollution that comes from emissions from power plants, industrial sites, vehicle exhaust, and outdoor chemical use. It irritates and damages the lungs and has been linked to chronic conditions like asthma.
The EPA made its decision using air quality monitoring data and its own modeling studies. It released some of its results in a March technical document.
Based on the monitoring numbers, Bexar County's ozone levels are clearly higher than they are required to be under the air quality standard.
From 2015 to 2017, the period of record for the EPA’s decision, San Antonio’s average ozone levels were calculated at 74 parts per billion. The standard is 70 parts per billion.
This year, San Antonio has experienced six days on which ozone reached levels considered unhealthy for sensitive groups, according to air monitoring data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
Under the federal Clean Air Act, the TCEQ must now enact a state implementation plan outlining ways to clean up San Antonio's air.
The likely outcome will be stricter regulations on industrial facilities moving to or expanding in San Antonio. Planning for new transportation projects might take an additional six to 18 months.
The EPA’s decision seems to reflect some imperviousness in the agency’s inner workings to outside political pressure. Since 2017, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been trying to persuade the EPA that San Antonio doesn’t need any additional regulation on its air.
Abbott spent years suing the EPA as Texas attorney general, a background he shared with former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who served as EPA Administrator from February 2017 until his resignation in early July.
In April, the Trump Administration issued a memo directing Pruitt to give more weight to pollution wafting in from foreign countries, among other mitigating factors, when making official air quality decisions.
Most San Antonio political leaders, including Wolff, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, and Diane Rath, executive director of the Alamo Area Council of Governments, have argued the EPA shouldn't impose any additional ozone regulations on San Antonio. In return, they pledged to enact local policies to clean up the air.
Included were 2017 bans by Bexar County and the cities of Leon Valley San Antonio on heavy truck idling. The City, CPS Energy, the San Antonio Water System, and VIA Metropolitan Transit converted more of their fleets to compressed natural gas, hybrid, and electric vehicles.
The closure later this year of CPS Energy’s Deely units – the utility’s oldest coal-fired power plant – should also help. CPS Energy’s coal plants are the single largest source of ozone-forming pollutants in Bexar County.
Wheeler, a former industry lobbyist who took over Pruitt's job after his resignation, referenced Deely's closure and pollution wafting over the border in his statement.
"Analysis from Texas about the role of international emissions, including from Mexico, and the pending closure of a coal-fired power plant in Bexar County will help ensure that implementation of this standard has minimal burdens on economic development,” Wheeler said.
San Antonio’s ozone levels have been declining over the past 20 years largely because of advances in vehicle technology, even as the city’s population has grown.
San Antonio would have met a 75-parts-per-billion ozone standard set in 2008, but the Obama-era EPA ratcheted it down to 70 parts per billion in 2015 in response to public health concerns.
In May, the EPA announced it would begin a review of the ozone standard to meet a Clean Air Act deadline of October 2020.
San Antonio needs to stop spraying weed killer along roads running off into creeks. S e military drive is really bad after spraying, everything turns brown, trees, bushes, etc…right over salado creek. This happens all over San Antonio.
This is also visible along S WW White Rd!! The lower half of all the vegetation is DEAD and looks HORRIBLE!!! Now it’s a fire hazard… Great, thanks a lot. Spraying poison along MILES of road along property owner’s backyards… Great, thanks a lot.
Suggestions to help reduce dirty air and our Carbon Footprint in SA
My concerns stem from having to put my wife in the hospital this past winter. Dirty air is not only a concern to the EPA, but importantly to the citizens of SA that suffer from respiratory illnesses such as asthma, COPD, bronchitis, etc. I don’t know what can be done to reduce allergens, but the following could have positive results:
Having many opportunities to drive around SA in the wee hours of late night and early mornings, I see many cars and trucks, in very light traffic, IDLING at stop lights.
It is apparent that few, if any, (as I haven’t found one) intersections have a peek traffic sequence to the lights and a late night/early morning sequence. This creates many cars/trucks to be idling unnecessarily at all SA intersections needlessly. With the population growth that is predicted, this problem will only get much worse.
I am basing my suggested solutions on my assumption that most, if not all, intersection light sequences are under computerized control.
If I’m wrong in this assumption, then upgrades to 21st century technology should occur.
Solution 1
At 10 PM until 6 AM (or other appropriate hours) the light sequence is FLASHING RED in all directions (Note: People tend to approach flashing red lights with more caution than otherwise)
Solution 2
Same as above at 4 way intersections with the exception that the dominant traffic flow be FLASHING YELLOW and the less dominant be FLASHING RED.
Solution 3
At appropriate hours the daytime sequence be replaced by another sequence reducing the idle time in all directions to appropriate levels of traffic.
This summer I’ve seen many cars and trucks idling with the AC on. I wish there would be a way to discourage this wasteful practice.
It would be nice if you guys had mentioned that 70-80% of the biogenic and anthropogenic ozone producing pollution that is recorded in San Antonio is from transport! The EPA knows this, yet still placed us into “non-attainment”.
For more info on this, please check out my website: http://www.ozoneinformation.com
Yet San Antonio focuses on sports arenas, outdoor concerts, more give aways for the tourist industry.
Why isn’t San Antonio focusing on the need for real mass transit? We need elevated trains similar to the ones at Disney World. Quiet, run by electricity, and not hindered by traffic.
Perhaps those of us who are suffering with bronchial issues should sue the governor and City Council?
No, San Antonio city council focuses on taking down statues and painting rainbow crosswalks. There’s no originality nor critical thinking in solving the city’s problems. They just keep taking their cues from places like Seattle. A cesspool of homelessness, disease, and disfunctional government .
I was curious if Bear County will sign on, along with other surrounding counties, to begin performing annual emissions testing? Bexar has been out of the loop for a while. Since the county is growing in population, this means more vehicles of all kinds contributing to additional vehicular smog and especially at idle state. I think it’s time! Again, I’m surprised that SA has been gotten out of this one for so long.
Emissions testing doesn’t clean up anything. Just drives up the cost of your annual inspection.
In LA they have a number to call when you spot a vehicle spewing fumes.
There is a number it is 311.
How Reporting Works
https://www.tceq.texas.gov/airquality/mobilesource/vetech/smokingvehicles.html
You can help the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) get the word to owners of smoking vehicles in Texas. The next time you see a car, truck, or bus anywhere in Texas with dirty smoke coming from its exhaust for more than 10 consecutive seconds, write down the license number, date, time, and city where you saw the smoking vehicle.
Report the smoking vehicle, within 30 days, by submitting the online reporting form in English or Spanish or by calling 1-800-453-SMOG (7664). You do not have to give your name, and the report is free.
The TCEQ will then notify the owner that his or her vehicle may be contributing to air pollution by smoking excessively. The TCEQ will also provide the owner with information about how car maintenance will improve the vehicle’s performance.
CPS Energy plans to shut down the “Dirty Deely” coal plant this year 2018.
Climate Action SA climateactionsa.com recommends closing the other two coal plants, Spruce I in 2022
& Spruce II in 2025.
We recommend that the transition away from gas be completed by 2030.
Currently, CPS Energy wants to keep burning coal PAST 2042!
and to keep on fracking.
CPS, that’s not the way to clean up our air.