What is your role in air quality improvement for the Houston area?

Rentz: My role is to connect the dots and provide communication on the Clean Air Plan for Ozone Attainment among stakeholders in Houston and TCEQ. We need to target air issues when monitors show concern in an area and to determine if monitors are adequate in the area. I will facilitate communication between local government and industry. Working with a mayor that is focused on the environment makes this job easier, and the county is supportive. I don’t think getting the air quality improvements we need to achieve will be a breeze, but I have a relationship with environment, industry and local government representatives.

It’s important to understand that industry is not just the Ship Channel. It includes construction and diesel engines. The state can’t regulate off-road construction, marine vessels or locomotives.

What kind of insight have you gained in your previous experience working with the county commissioners’ office and with industrial clients to be effective in this position?

Rentz: All of my experience together is great for this work. The relationships I’ve developed and understanding of the challenges are helpful – without these it would be hard to start working on solutions.

How will you work with Mayor White and Harris County’s Environmental Division?

Rentz: The SIP Clean Air initiative brought us together in this region for a quick turn around. The modern era for looking at clean air and working on it jointly started in 1997 and 1998 with the State Implementation Plan (SIP). Under the Clean Air Act, the state is required to submit a clean air plan for the area for reducing pollution from various sources and to update this plan periodically. At that time environmentalists, government and industry working together was new. TCEQ did a good job last year. When elevated levels of 1,3-butadiene were reported in Melody Park and Manchester area in 2005, the state implemented a VOCs (volatile organic compounds) agreement with industries in the area to address sources. There was a large cut in the amount of 1,3-butadiene concentrations with an agreement in place for the later half of this year, and measures are still being put into place.

The city came in with another agreement. The state provided the foundation and the city provided the muscle to make sure the agreement was carried forward.

Can you bridge communication for effectively impacting the environment?

Rentz: I’m an optimist. Where there are opportunities to work together, I think there are possibilities. The relationships I’m working with on all levels feel the time is really right for innovative change.

What are the top priorities in making a difference in air quality for Houston?

Rentz:We are running into technical barriers. The new technology research and development group is testing new technology as quickly as possible. For ozone reduction, technology is still in the beginning stages. The new federal standards that are effective in 2010 won’t be implemented until 2015 and the state can’t force the reductions to be implemented sooner. Our challenge is to determine if the technology works and provide incentive for industry to use the new technology to reduce emissions.

What are the greatest challenges for improving Houston’s air quality?

Rentz:Diesel is a major issue. On-road car standards have been in place for a while and emissions have been declining rapidly. This is not the case for diesel and non-road emissions. Federal standards have come into place. Texas laws for diesel emissions are better than federal standards and this hasn’t been focused on before.

Regarding ozone, what we are challenged with now is looking at the effectiveness of the controls in place to date in order to reach the eight-hour ozone standard of 50-80 percent reduction. There have been controls in place and we need to be careful about how we put them into place, maybe targeting highly reactive VOCs. Baseline modeling is not always accurate. Ozone can’t be monitored at a single source – it’s a combination of various sources – that’s why modeling is so important. Texas has one of the most advanced ozone modeling programs. New York and other cities have the same problem, but Texas is putting a lot more money into it.

What changes would be made this year if the precautionary principle were being used in guiding decisions?

Rentz:In an ideal world we would have an ideal monitoring system and would be able to determine when reductions are being effectuated. We have fugitive emissions. New tools may allow us to target these, such as an infrared camera – it looks like a video camera and can view VOCs through a heat-sensing lens. It’s effective from an investigative standpoint and industry likes it as well – finding emissions helps them locate leaking and loss of valuable product.

The more information we have the better. Comprehensive monitoring is very expensive. TCEQ is looking at innovative ways to test that using the monitors we have in place. The Houston area is one of the most heavily monitored places in the nation. We are doing a pilot project trying to detect low level early releases, As soon as releases are detected, an alert goes to area industries to try and stop the release before more release occurs. This really shows that we are trying to use monitors we have in place in an innovative way. We want to determine better ways to use tools where non-compliance is occurring. We have to know about it to fix it.

What would it take for Houston to become a model city for improving the environment and cleaning up the air?

Rentz:We need people in place who want to make change and work to get it to happen. Just the physics of how ozone is formed is so difficult, one agency couldn’t fix it – it requires a network of people to work together. Houston is fortunate because we have people in place, and that’s exciting.