The Dallas Morning News
www.dallasnews.com

Revisions to clean-air plan for Houston area submitted

11/18/2000

By Natalie Gott

AUSTIN – Homeowners could operate gas-powered lawn mowers any time of the day and not have to coat air conditioners under recommended revisions to the state plan to clean up the air in parts of East Texas.

The three-member Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission received the recommendations on the Houston clean-air plan Friday from executive director Jeff Saitas.

The recommendations are expected to influence significantly the proposal the commission adopts Dec. 6 and submits to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by year's end.

The plan is intended to bring Houston, Harris County and seven surrounding counties into compliance with federal clean-air standards by 2007.

Mr. Saitas' proposals would leave intact many of the original proposals for the Houston plan, proposed for public comment in August.

The recommendations include unprecedented restrictions on highway speeds, limits on when construction crews could operate heavy equipment, and requirements for vehicle emissions inspection and maintenance plans.

However, in the revised plan for the nation's fourth-largest city, Mr. Saitas proposed four major changes.

One change drops the restriction on homeowners from operating gas-powered lawn equipment between 6 a.m. and noon between April and October, beginning in 2005.

The restriction would still apply to commercial lawn and garden companies, but Mr. Saitas said he would recommend that the companies be allow to apply for variances from the plan.

Tom "Smitty" Smith, director Texas Public Citizen, applauded the decision.

"Lawnmowers ... are enormous sources of pollution and we need to clean them up. But we agree it is unfair to penalize the weekend user, and it makes sense to focus on the commercial operators and require them to be more efficient," he said.

Another proposal cut from the plan would have required homeowners east of Interstate 35 to reduce ozone from their air conditioning units by 70 percent by applying a catalytic coating to their units.

Critics said that would boost prices of residential air conditioners by $1,000.

Mr. Saitas substituted an energy efficiency standard to make air conditioners more efficient and use less electricity. The conservation commission would work with manufacturers on the recommendation, he said.

Mr. Saitas also recommended revising the timetable for refineries and chemical plants to reduce their emissions by 90 percent. He proposed allowing plants to cut emissions by 80 percent by 2005 and by 90 percent by the end of 2006. The original plan called for a 90 percent emission cut by 2005.

"We have heard through the comment period of the technical difficulties getting that last 10 percent reduction," Mr. Saitas said. "We have also heard of the escalating cost for that last 10 percent, and we felt like giving more time would give us the ability to further develop technologies and further lower the costs but still taking the pollution out of the air.

Mr. Saitas also dropped his original requirement for lower sulfur levels in gasoline than the federal government required.

"I was concerned about price volatility for gasoline because of a small market of a specialized gasoline," he said. "I was concerned about that. And watching the Midwest and how the prices spiked up there, I was concerned that might happen in Texas."

Mr. Smith, noting that Texas produces about half of the gasoline produced in the nation, said that refineries "clearly manipulate gas prices whenever new environmental regulations are proposed or enacted."

He said manufacturing gasoline with lower quantities of sulfur in Texas would give courage to other states to enact similarly tough rules that are good for environment.