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Wednesday, September 24, 1997

EPA official scorns Texas clean-air efforts

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) -- An Environmental Protection Agency official has accused Texas of paying lip service to clean-air efforts.

Allyn Davis, planning and permit division director for the EPA's Dallas-based, five-state Region 6, delivered his criticism and outlined proposed new pollution standards at a briefing for state and North Texas officials.

Of 33 metropolitan areas across the nation classified as "moderate" violators of the federal ozone standard, 28 improved their air quality enough to meet federal standards, Davis said.

"Twenty-eight had a can-do approach," Davis said Monday. In Texas, "there's something wrong," he told about 100 representatives of North Texas governments, businesses and environmental groups.

Davis specifically criticized the Legislature for rejecting a strict auto emissions program for Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and El Paso and enacting a milder one in its place. He also decried a state decision not to group Denton and Collin counties with Tarrant and Dallas counties in the program.

He noted mistakes in the state plan, particularly population projections for pollution-plagued areas during the 1990s. The population of the four Dallas-Fort Worth metro counties has grown by 13 percent from 1990 to this year, not 10 percent as predicted, he said.

"You cannot throw up your hands and say you will not try or only give lip service," he said. "We have people with health problems. We have an obligation."

Also, monitoring in bad-air regions of Texas has been "woefully inadequate," and the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission has hesitated in adding more monitors, Davis said. Other moderately polluted areas have twice as many monitors, he said.

The sterner the classification, the tougher the federal requirements for pollution reduction. The state will have until November 1998 to submit a more stringent anti-pollution plan, and Dallas-Fort Worth will have one year beyond that to meet the standard or face more restrictions.

In the future, standards will be enforced in Texas just as in other states, Davis said. "There will be no wink or nod," he said.

"It is a pain in the butt, but if Texas gets behind it, the whining (from the public) will die down in a few months," Davis said.