The Houston Chronicle
www.chron.com

By BILL DAWSON
November 29, 2000

Environmentalists have already branded Gov. George W. Bush's voluntary program for "grandfathered" polluters a failure, and now statistics indicate it is off to a sluggish start.

No major industrial facilities have obtained voluntary permits or reduced emissions under the program, nearly 15 months after its creation, according to a draft report issued Wednesday by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission.

Thirty-seven companies have applied for the voluntary permits, and 125 others have promised in writing to apply by the program's expiration on Sept. 1, 2001, the TNRCC said.

"Grandfathered" refers to the many older industrial facilities that state lawmakers exempted from a 1971 requirement for emission permits. Such permits often impose tighter pollution limits than general regulations.

Because of other mandatory state programs -- including proposed smog-reduction plans for Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth -- about 23 percent of emissions from major grandfathered facilities will be eliminated, the report said.

"What this report shows is that there has been a substantial level of activity dealing with these grandfathered facilities, though not so much yet in the pure (voluntary permit) arena," TNRCC Chairman Robert Huston said.

The voluntary program has helped "raise the attention level" of industry officials about grandfathered emissions -- a carrot that complements the stick in other programs, Huston said.

But the state director of the Sierra Club renewed the charge -- already leveled by environmentalists in September upon the voluntary program's first anniversary -- that the effort has flopped.

The new TNRCC report reveals "dismal results," Ken Kramer said.

"This is exactly what environmentalists and the public health community predicted would be the outcome of reliance on a voluntary approach," he said.

A 1997 inventory by the TNRCC revealed that grandfathered facilities in Texas still released nearly 900,000 tons of air pollutants annually. Even the most stringent regulatory program would not erase all of it, however.

After much agitation by environmentalists and others for an end to the permit exemption, the Legislature passed two laws dealing with the issue in 1999.

In that year's electricity deregulation act, grandfathered utility plants were ordered to make pollution cuts. In the second law, other grandfathered facilities, such as oil refineries and chemical plants, were allowed to volunteer for a new kind of emission permit. Unlike regular TNRCC permits, these voluntary permits cannot be contested by the public in agency hearings.

For two years, Bush steadfastly promoted the voluntary approach for all industries. But near the end of the 1999 legislative session, he agreed to the mandate for utility plants proposed in the Legislature. The governor's preference for a voluntary program was strongly criticized by Vice President Al Gore and his supporters in the presidential race.

Once companies with grandfathered facilities have the opportunity to correct any erroneous data on the draft issued Wednesday, the TNRCC report will be presented to state legislators to consider in the session that starts in January.

Kramer noted that the lawmakers who sponsored the 1999 bills "indicated that if the voluntary program was not successful, they'd come back and reconsider that (nonmandatory) approach."

The TNRCC report supports "putting a mandatory end to the grandfathering of these dirty old industrial plants," he said.

Huston would not predict what legislators may do, except to say that he expects they will not renew the voluntary program.

He said he is "a little surprised we have not had more actual applications (for voluntary permits) to this point," but added that it is still too early to draw firm conclusions about what that means.

"The report shows that thus far, 45 percent or so of (major grandfathered facilities') emissions have been subjected to some sort of agency process," Huston said.

"And out of that, we actually are showing we have eliminated, or will eliminate as permits take hold, about half of that, so that's good news," he added.

Until the voluntary program's scheduled expiration, Huston said he will focus on achieving pollution reductions at grandfathered facilities, regardless of the means.

How the emission cuts happen "doesn't matter that much," he said.