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Barely in compliance now, San Antonio will have to lower ozone pollution

Pollution rule to get tougher

By , Staff WriterUpdated

Faced with Thursday’s announcement of a tougher federal clean air standard, local leaders and the mother of an asthmatic child vowed to lead the fight against ground-level ozone pollution.

City leaders said they will develop a regional plan to improve air quality in San Antonio, which would be in violation of the new federal standard for ozone if implemented today.

“We need to act to reduce the health risk for our citizens associated with ozone,” said Peter Bella, a member of the Alamo Area Council of Governments Air Improvement Resources Advisory Committee.

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San Antonio is one of the few major U.S. cities still in compliance for ozone, a pollutant that poses a threat to asthmatics and others with respiratory difficulties. The city already has exceeded the current standard of 75 parts per billion at its Camp Bullis monitor, with a three-year average of 78 ppb, under a compliance system overseen by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

The Environmental Protection Agency said a new standard of 70 ppb will take effect in as little as two years. If applied now, the level at the Camp Bullis monitor and at a near Northwest Side monitor would be in violation of that standard but not at a third monitor on the Southeast Side.

Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said the region needs to “keep an eye” on the effect of flaring of gases from the Eagle Ford Shale while taking action to promote public transportation, bicycle mobility and availability of compressed natural gas for trucks. Recalling a “great clean air compact with the EPA” that San Antonio entered in 2003, Wolff said the city “showed improvements as we went along.

“Now we find ourselves some 10 years later, back in the same situation,” he said.

If there are no more high readings for 2015, the three-year averages at San Antonio’s three ozone monitors will have fallen slightly in the past year, from 80 ppb to 78 ppb at Camp Bullis; 75 ppb to 74 ppb at San Antonio Northwest; and 67 ppb to 66 ppb at Calaveras Lake. But there were high readings Aug. 27 to 29, in the peak of the April-to-October ozone season.

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City Councilman Ron Nirenberg, chairman of AACOG’s Air Improvement Resources Executive Committee, called the EPA announcement “good news for our children and our grandchildren.” He said he wants to work on a regional menu of actions, from fleet replacements to idling restrictions on trucks, to maintain clean air in support of public health and the economy.

“This isn’t just a health issue, it’s a community issue and it’s about the future of San Antonio,” he said.

Mayor Ivy Taylor and council members Shirley Gonzales and Ray Lopez also sounded a call for clean air. In a news release, Taylor said the city “has grown in an unsustainable way and … must take aggressive action.”

Dr. Vince Fonseca, former state epidemiologist with the Texas Department of State Health Services, said higher ozone pollution has been proven to cause asthma attacks and heart attacks and “make us sicker.” It also affects people with chronic pulmonary obstructive disease and some with diabetes, he said.

“We all know that higher levels send people to the hospital,” he said.

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Krystal Henegan, Texas field organizer with the Moms Clean Air Force, said her son, then 4, developed uncontrolled asthma after her family moved to San Antonio a couple of years ago and that he was put on seven medications.

“As a parent, I want to give my son plenty of opportunities to play outside. But right now, it’s difficult with his asthma” she said.

shuddleston@express-news.net

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Twitter: @shuddlestonSA

 

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|Updated

Scott Huddleston is a veteran staff writer, covering education, local history, preservation and the Alamo. He has been a reporter at the Express-News since 1985, covering a variety of issues, including local government, public safety, criminal justice, flooding, transportation, military, water and the environment. He is a native Texan and longtime San Antonian. Email Scott at shuddleston@express-news.net.