What's up with the SIP?
by Jane Dale Owen
We've begun the year 2003 with a heightened awareness of the impact that air
pollution imposes on us as citizens of the Houston community. The brew that we breathe
daily includes many toxins and carcinogens emitted into the air from industrial sources
and our own motor vehicles.
We've known this for a long time. In the early 1970's a pioneering cancer
epidemiologist, Eleanor Macdonald, published research that showed Houston cancer
death rates were tied to air pollution. Macdonald had developed research methods as a
young Radcliffe graduate in the 1930s by working with physicians at what was to become
Memorial Sloan Kettering Institute in Massachusetts. In 1948 she was hired by M.D.
Anderson Cancer Research Center. After years of meticulous research of hospital records
with a staff she personally trained, Macdonald traced high cancer death rates to
neighborhoods downwind of the Houston Ship Channel. After Macdonald retired in the
early 1980s, MD Anderson dropped her work. The failure of the Houston medical
establishment to fund environmental health research was underscored in "The Silent
Treatment," an article published last May by Bob Burtman in the National Resources
Defense Council Magazine, "ON EARTH."
Gross miscalculations in the actual and the industry-reported emissions figures grow
every year. In the summer of 2000, federal and state investigators conducted a $20
million study of Houston's air pollution called the Texas Air Quality Study (TexAQS
2000) which confirmed what environmentalists have been saying all along: that industry
vastly underreports the magnitude of its emissions
Scientists flying instrument-laden aircraft through the industrial plumes measured
chemical emissions so intense that their first reaction was to question whether industry
had been calculating its emissions correctly. They discovered that the calculations were
being made according to methods defined by the Environmental Protection Agency,
correctly, but something was completely wrong. The ozone precursors were seven to
fifteen times higher than what industry reported. Some chemicals were one hundred times
higher than reported.
Meanwhile the clock is ticking on when the state must come into compliance and in
the absence of meaningful monitoring and reporting, the bell has already rung for the
2004 mid-course review. Indeed, when did the "course" start; who is counting, and when
will it be over?
Is 2007 a Realistic Deadline-or An Arbitrary One?
In 1990 Congress toughened the Federal Clean Air Act, requiring states to create plans
to clean up sore spots such as Houston. Our region's State Implementation Plan is
supposed to be complete by 2004 and producing results by 2007, or Texas could lose $4
billion of federal transportation funds. Most environmentalists doubt that Texas will meet
these deadlines. We expect that industry, with many of its representatives installed in the
highest federal offices, will appeal for more time.
CLEAN, the Citizens League for Environmental Action Now, as usual, has more
questions than answers. But we have one important suggestion: If you want to know
more about your local air quality, call Beverly Monday at 281-983-2201 to arrange for a
training session to learn how to take air samples with various devices.
Through citizen concerns of inadequate monitoring and reporting, and the efforts of
CLEAN, four environmental agencies-Harris County Pollution Control, the EPA, Texas
Commission on Environmental Quality and City of Houston Bureau of Air Quality-have
assembled in one room where all have now agreed on the worth of implementing a
program that will bring citizens into the effort to monitor and report air pollution. The
resulting program is HGCAMP, the Houston Galveston Citizens Air Monitoring Project.
Citizen air sampling will help Harris County in identifying the culprits, holding them
accountable, and mitigating air pollution.
SIP Unclear So Far
As to the State Implementation Plan, information about it is as dense and obscure as
the ozone smog that emanates from the Ship Channel. Meetings regarding the SIP
abound, and are as crashingly dull as they are uninformative. There is much speculation
as to which modeling is preferable, as well as to who should check which model for
accuracy. There is certainly no helpful information enabling citizens to make an informed
decisions about what air quality improvements may reasonably be expected, where to live
or work, or where to select a healthful school for their children.
To find where we are in current SIP progress, we endeavored to contact several
professionals, academics and bureaucrats who are involved in the program. In our quest
for clarification, the E.P.A. in Dallas guided us to the TCEQ website
and we were then shown the
postings of the latest definitive information-the 2002 compilation. The SIP now calls for
an 80% reduction of NOx; a 45% reduction of the four toxic, highly reactive rapid ozone
precursors, ethylene, propylene, butene and 1,3 butadiene, to be in place for the year
2004-5. It is believed that this will have Texas in compliance by 2007, the year the
guillotine falls for the $4 billion transportation funds. CLEAN, however, believes
otherwise.
It is obvious that with our currently flawed industry reporting system, the "Toxic
Release Inventory" still in place, measurable goals cannot be achieved. How can you
know how hot it is if your thermometer is broken? How can you know how much you
weigh if you use defective scales?
