Today (Monday May 17, 2010), the Houston Chronicle reported a fire at the LyondellBasell plant near the Houston Ship Channel. According to the Chronicle, no injuries or deaths have been reported, and reporters did not attribute a reason for the fire in the article.

However, it will be interesting to keep up with this story, because I wonder if the fire was caused by something that could have been avoided by the TCEQ after inspecting the refinery. As we have seen, the TCEQ’s inspections are not the most thorough.

I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve addressed the Houston Press article, “A Quiet Hell,” a number of times, but the author, Chris Vogel, does a great job of explaining the politics behind the TCEQ and big-name refineries–in the end, the TCEQ works for and supports BP and LyondellBasell and Shell and… you get the point. It makes sense, and it’s good (albeit immoral) business: the TCEQ made 72 percent of its revenue in 2008 from its permits and licensing fees, versus just 2.7 percent from state funds (taxes, etc.). And they have a way to keep making that money.

Vogel’s after-thought article, “A Quiet Hell: Game Time,” explains more about the permit-granting process. The TCEQ hands out ten-year permits to refineries, and rarely do they deny the refinery’s request. In fact, state law mandates that a permit cannot be denied as long as the factory agrees that its emissions will not increase.

Houstonians saw this law in action earlier this year when the TCEQ renewed LyondellBasell’s permit. Requests from the City of Houston and Mayor Annise Parker for a hearing concerning the renewal were ignored simply because LyondellBasell claimed their emissions would not increase. The TCEQ did no further investigation, and on Feb. 24, 2010, LyondellBasell’s wish was granted.

LyondellBasell is set for another 10 years of polluting Houston’s air, and if this trend continues, the only negative repercussion might be a few small slap-on-the-wrist fines to allow the TCEQ to save face. An article in the Chronicle was written before Vogel’s Press piece and addresses what little action can be done: a state senator attempted to introduce a bill last spring that would have required that all fines would be equal to or more than the amount the company saved by not installing nonpolluting equipment and procedures. Obviously, the bill didn’t go over so well, but the senator had the right idea.

Since 1995, the TCEQ has issued (and still issues) what are called ‘flex permits’ to over 140 operations across Texas. Vogel explains how these work:

[Flex permits] allow facilities to have a single permit limit for an entire plant. A flexible permit acts as an umbrella, and generally does not impose specific limits for individual emissions sources. As long as the entire facility stays under an overall cap, it remains in compliance.

Flex permits were the TCEQ’s way of facing its problems and avoiding the costs involved with safe and environmentally friendly improvements to refineries stuck in their old, dirty and costly ways. Larry Soward, a former commissioner, thinks this will have to change, and he says that the TCEQ has only itself to blame:

[Flex permits] are a real dilemma for everyone. If you say that they are not consistent with federal law, however, then that means that the facilities will have to be re-permitted and face different standards and major expenditures to upgrade or change operations to reduce emissions to acceptable standards. There’s not going to be a simple, cheap resolution. But industry kind of brought this upon themselves by insisting on the flexible permit concept, and now they may have to pay the piper.

The law must change and adapt to our environmental and health concerns. The fact that the TCEQ is called a governmental agency is ridiculous, because it is fueling the industry and doesn’t plan to stop until it absolutely has to–which may be soon.

Starting last month, the TCEQ is under the scrutiny of the Sunset Review, a legislative check-and-balance organization that has the ability to abolish government agencies and commissions. Their conclusions on the TCEQ will be published at the end of their investigation (Jan. 2011), but the Sunset process encourages public participation and testimony, and this will hopefully prove to be the best way to stop the TCEQ’s trend and start focusing on breathing clean air.

More of Texas was examined the second time around–measurement sites were posted throughout east Texas and into the Gulf of Mexico. According to NOAA’s Web site, researchers continued using four NOAA planes to sample the air, but they also utilized ground points, weather balloons, a research ship, and satellite technology.

The Lockheed WP-3D Orion, a four engine turbo-prop aircraft originally used as a weather plane, flew out of Ellington Field in Houston to sample air at different altitudes and in different atmospheric conditions. According to NOAA, the choice to convert a weather plane into a research base was logical and innovative:

From the perspective of climate research, an aircraft can undertake a systematic study of the formation and evolution of the chemical and optical properties of aerosols from urban and industrial sources. The aim of such research is to address one of the more important open questions in climate research: how the various types of emissions and the subsequent atmospheric chemistry determine the optical properties of aerosols, and hence, the impact of these aerosols on radiative forcing in the atmosphere.

This NOAA aircraft was converted from a weather plane to a chemical research facility in 1994. c. noaa.gov.

Scientists learned from the TexAQS 2000 that Houston’s pollution problem affected more than just Houstonians, so the TexAQS II sought to further investigate this by placing sites farther from Houston’s ship channel. The following maps show the difference in the amount of area covered by each study:

The TexAQS 2000 focused on measuring air quality in and around Houston. c. utexas.edu.

The TexAQS II sampled air all over Texas, including spots in the Gulf. c. noaa.org.

Researchers found from the TexAQS II that Houston air quality had only slightly improved since the TexAQS 2000, and most emissions were still well above the reported inventory estimates. An article about the study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, and the abstract explains the two most important finds:

• “First, despite decreases in actual emissions of highly reactive volatile organic compounds (HRVOC) and some improvements in inventory estimates since the TexAQS 2000 study, the current Houston area emission inventories still underestimate HRVOC emissions by approximately 1 order of magnitude.”

• “Second, the background ozone in eastern Texas, which represents the minimum ozone concentration that is likely achievable through only local controls, can approach or exceed the current National Ambient Air Quality Standard of 75 ppbv for an 8-h average. These findings have broad implications for air quality control strategies in eastern Texas.”

Another article from the Journal of Geophysical Research discovered that levels of NO2 emissions from the Houston Ship Channel area were 70 percent [2542 kg h(-1)] and 43 percent [452 kg h(-1)] above the reported inventory values. SO2 emissions were found to be 34 percent above the reported inventory values, as well.

The TexAQS II was necessary to track changes in air quality over a 5-6 year period, and it offered additional insight into the way pollution travels. The findings from both studies contradict the TCEQ’s claim of significantly improving the air quality in Texas, and it proves that the TCEQ needs to hold itself responsible for honest estimates. The TexAQS II used actual calculations and samples to prove that emission estimations are not accurate, and the researchers did this by spearheading a more precise method of gathering information.

Air pollution in Houston may be the worst in the US, but the haze of smog isn’t just limited to Houston’s skyline. This video shows how air pollution is affecting the Southwest states and particularly, our national parks. The video addresses an issue I’ve been talking about–air pollution travels and isn’t contained to only a specific area. It’s disturbing to see a layer of smog lingering above such naturally beautiful landscapes, even if Houstonians have grown accustomed to the aesthetic effects of air pollution.

But what is being reported about Houston’s air quality? What do Houstonians think about it?

Let’s look at what the Houston Area Survey found:

• In 2007, 44% gave the lowest possible rating (“poor”) to the efforts to control air and
  water pollution in the Houston area. In 2009, 29% thought those efforts were “poor.”
• Only 39% in this year’s survey believed that air pollution in the Houston area has generally
  “gotten worse” over the past 3 years, down from 43% in 2007 and 45% in 2005.
• In the 2009 survey, 44% said they were “very concerned” about the effects of air pollution
  on their family’s health. This was true of 49% in 2007 and of 52% in 2005.

According to the HAS, Houston’s citizens feel that air pollution has improved in Houston over the past five years. This is surprising to me, but I also wonder how Houstonians are judging their answers: are they looking at data and factual reporting, or did they happen to complete the survey during a particularly pretty week?

The Texas Commission on Environmental Equality would agree with the consensus among Houstonians, as stated on their website. This page, called “Texas Air Quality Successes,” claims that Texas has improved in the following ways:

• Texas has some of the most stringent emission standards in the United States.
• Texas uses the latest technology to investigate, evaluate, and improve air quality.
• Texas pursues mobile reductions in air quality through its grant incentive and vehicle replacement programs.
• The TCEQ uses sound scientific research to guide ozone regulations and, as a result, has achieved improvements in ozone concentrations statewide.

This is what TCEQ claims is happening to air quality in Texas, but a Houston Press article from November 2009 reports things differently, specifically for Houston and its surrounding areas. I’ve already blogged about their article, “A Quiet Hell,” but compare what the Press found and what TCEQ is telling people:

• More than 20 million pounds of pollutants, 450,000 of which are known carcinogens, were emitted due to equipment breakdowns or unscheduled maintenance, startup or shutdown events;
• TCEQ rarely took ­enforcement action, and when the agency did, the fines were nominal and in most cases later significantly reduced;
• The plants with the most violations paid the lowest percentage of their fines;
• TCEQ is so understaffed that it can take years to finalize penalties, and some critics say it avoids assessing time-consuming violations altogether.
• And, as a matter of policy, TCEQ strayed from federal law by combining multiple federal permit violations into a single state violation, thereby giving industry a break by assessing fewer and less costly penalties.

There’s an obvious discrepency between what the government is telling its citizens and what is investigated by non-governmental reporters. TCEQ’s claim that Texas has “some of the most stringent emission standards in the United States” is contradicted by all of the Press’ findings.

There’s something missing, and I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps it’s just the way people are skewing the facts, but everything doesn’t add up.

The goal of the Texas Air Quality Study, according to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, is “to research ground-level ozone and fine particle air pollution in the Houston region and the eastern half of Texas. This scientific data will be used to develop better assessment tools and more efficient and cost-effective strategies to manage air quality.”

The Texas Air Quality Study of 2000 (TexAQS) was conducted just after Houston surpassed Los Angeles as having the worst air quality in the US, and 16 months of data analysis supported this claim. Researchers also discovered the importance of looking beyond Houston and realizing that air pollution doesn’t just stay in one area — it affects other parts of the country, as well.

Chemical engineer David Allen, director of the University of Texas’ Center for Energy and Environmental Resources, was a part of the research team and explained how these findings could, and should, change regulatory action in Texas:

In 2000, we demonstrated that sound scientific information can be like a compass, guiding state regulatory decisions and what we want to do is make sure that a scientifically based approach continues to be used to inform decisions. We’re shooting to inform as many air pollution regulatory decisions for different cities as we can.

An example of the data collected by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) airplane is shown in the table below. This particular graph reflects the ozone findings of a 12-minute sampling of air at different altitudes around the Houston Ship Channel.

c. UT Austin. A sample of the data collected by plane.

The TexAQS discovered the following major issues, according to an article in the Journal of Geophysical Research:

• High ozone concentrations in Houston depend strongly upon the interaction of synoptic-scale winds and local coastal/sea breeze oscillations
• High concentrations of light alkenes such as propene, ethene, 1, 3-butadiene and butenes have been observed in the Houston metropolitan area. These compounds collectively labeled as highly reactive volatile organic compounds (HRVOC), and they play a major role in forming the highest concentrations of ozone observed in the Houston area
• Field study results from 2000 indicate that industrial emissions of HRVOC have been under reported in Houston
• High concentrations of HRVOC are capable of creating high concentrations of ozone. In Houston, ozone forms rapidly and efficiently in plumes of HRVOC and NO_x co-emitted from industrial sources. The highest ozone observed in Houston is almost exclusively associated with industrial emission plumes

It seems that the major find of the TexAQS in 2000 was the prevalence of ozone in the atmosphere surrounding Houston, and the importance of lowering these emissions because they effect not only Houstonians, but other parts of the country as well. I’ll also be looking at the results from an air quality study conducted in 2006, and what changed between 2000 and 2006. Has air quality in Houston improved since the initial study in 2000?

In an article entitled “Air Toxics Regulatory Issues Facing Urban Settings”, Kenneth Olden and Janet Guthrie spell out the history of emission control. This article is from 1996 and out-dated, but it offers a comprehensive glance at the regulatory history of air quality until the mid ’90s.

Air pollution was first examined as a cause for concern in the 1940s after an increase in automobile use, and therefore, pollutant emission. California was the first state to pass a law concerning air pollution — the Air Pollution Control Act of 1947.

Olden and Guthrie present an interesting dilemma: during the first half of the century, air quality was usually thought of as a local problem, rather than a federal one. However:

Air pollution moves, so an area can suffer from air pollution problems not of its own creation… For [this] reason, resolving air pollution problems is more amenable to group or regulatory action than to individual action.

The first federal air quality law was the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955. This was designed to inform the public and support research, rather than to actually regulate emissions. “Regulation of air quality as we know it” began in 1970. The government established the Environmental Protection Agency and the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments. This regulation demanded an increased role by the government in the regulation of air pollutants.

The 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments specifically addressed the regulation of three air toxics: mercury, beryllium, and asbestos. These toxics were added to the list of toxics already under watch: ozone, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and lead.

However, standards were not met in the regulation of the bulk of air toxics, and the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments listed a whopping 189 substances which were labeled as “air toxic”. These amendments also stated that “industry should use the maximum achievable control technology,” although the “best available technology” may have residual effects on the population.

This brings us back to Houston. Why is the air quality in Houston so bad?

“Comparative Assessment of Air Pollution- Related Health Risks in Houston” is an article published in 2007 by four experts at the University of Texas. This article addresses a few reasons why Houston is at a particular risk:

• “Houstonians drive an average of >140,000,000 miles/day [and] emissions from cars, trucks, and buses are a major source of airborne pollutants.”
• “Houston is home to >400 chemical manufacturing facilities, including two of the biggest refineries in the US. The petrochemical complex along the Houston ship channel is the largest in the country, and the Port of Houston is the largest in the US in terms of foreign tonnage and the second largest in total tonnage.”
• “Aggregate airborne emissions from many small sources spread across Greater Houston, such as dry cleaners, gas stations, surface coating processes, and gasoline-fueled lawn maintenance equipment, add to the complex mixture of ambient air pollutants typically present in Houston’s air.”
• And lastly, “meteorologic conditions and patterns also contribute… between April and October there are usually a high number of warm sunny days with quiescent breezes, causing ground-level buildup of air pollutant concentrations. Most air pollution episodes in Houston occur as the wind direction rotates continuously over a 24-hr period, trapping a mass of unmoving air over the city. Elevated ambient levels of air pollution often occur along with high temperatures and humidity, creating hazy, malodorous, and oppressive conditions in the city.”

Basically, a mix of development and weather in Houston has allowed us to achieve the poor standard of air quality that we have. And, as seen in the progression of federal regulation and the laws that accompany that regulation, the government has only done so much to ensure that its citizens are breathing clean and safe air.

We were asked to come up with a plan — to ask more questions. I’m going to break it down into an outline form for more clarity:

I. History- although air quality in Houston has always been an issue and is rooted in the economic development of the city, my main focus will be how this issue is developing and will develop in the future; however, it is important to look at previous data and records to recognize patterns and premonitions. William Blundell puts it nicely in the fourth chapter of his book, “The Art and Craft of Feature Writing”:

We’re seldom interested in the past for its own sake, only in how it relates to the present, but we’ve already seen how vital this linkage can be.

He raises an important question that should be asked when examining any developing social issue: Is it clearly a continuation of the past? I like the phrase, “continuation of the past”, and I feel that it relates directly to the attitudes of Houstonians about their air — how have these attitudes changed over the years, and how has this affected the legal and social implications concerned with air quality?

II. Scope

The first aspect of “scope” that Blundell examines is the quantitative factor: the development of a story using numbers and other expressions of quantity. Once again, looking at the data; this is vital to researching air quality. The concrete details and numbers tell a story in and of themselves. It is my job to find this information and present it in a clear and concise manner, allowing the majority of the interpretation of data to come from the reader and not the writer. This creates a barrier between a reporting piece and an opinion piece.

The second part of “scope” is the locale factor: what is the physical range of development? While this issue is obviously global and reaches as far as air can be inhaled, I will be focusing in on the specific Houston area and its surrounding suburbs. This may, of course, lend itself to researching other areas of Texas and perhaps the US; these questions will be raised as my research continues.

The diversity/intensity factor of “scope” really focuses on human involvement. Apart from looking at data and stating the obvious, I’d like to research more into the opinions and attitudes of Houstonians, professionals in environmental fields (not just local), and the businesses directly involved with air quality in Houston. The more I uncover and discover, the deeper I can dig and the more questions I can ask.

III. Reasons, impacts, and countermotives

There will prove to be a number of reasons why the air quality in Houston is among the worst in the nation. Particularly, I will be looking at those in the political and legal area. Some questions I hope to answer are:

• How have the laws, meant to protect Americans and Texans, fueled this issue, which doesn’t really seem to be getting better?
• Who are the advocates for legal and social change or progress?
• How must the political agenda of the EPA, TCEQ, and other governmental agencies evolve to better address the morality issues associated with air quality?

As Blundell points out, psychological and emotional motives are often “difficult to dig out” and are usually “hidden behind a screen of other reasons erected as justification”. He asks: Are such things as ego, vengeance, wish fulfillment apt to be major driving forces in the story? Does the personality of a major actor (in my situation, a major govt. agency, NGO, specific activists, etc.) bear heavily on it?

I ask myself and my readers: How has this issue affected the morale of Houstonians? For this, I need quotes from a variety of sources, and I may even conduct a survey of my own — asking real people how this real issue has genuinely affected them.

IV. Lastly, the future must be addressed. Obviously, this is something that will come into play with every question that I will be asking and the answers I will find. The future of the air quality in Houston is vital; if it wasn’t, my job here would be finished.

Blundell asks: Can I indicate what the future might hold? Then he says:

Note the use of the word “indicate”. We [as writers] have no business drawing flat conclusions about the future — but we do have a right and a duty to present material that suggests what may happen, particularly if there seem to be holes in the projections of others.

Perhaps my most important question I will ask will be one that doesn’t require specific facts and numbers: What do the people of Houston think the future looks like?

Now that I’ve planned, it’s time to execute.

On Wednesday, Feb. 24, TCEQ granted a 10-year permit to LyondellBasell Industries, the largest refinery in the Houston area, according to the Chronicle. TCEQ denied requests from the City of Houston and its residents for a public hearing to investigate the benzene emissions from the refinery before granting LyondellBasell its permit. Houston Mayor Annise Parker wants to ask TCEQ to reconsider their decision and investigate further.

This is the latest case of discrepancies among TCEQ’s methodology. Many environmental activists would argue that TCEQ does very little to monitor pollutant emissions from Houston-area refineries.

In fact, in 2008, a valve malfunction at one of LyondellBasell’s plants released 6,346 pounds of benzene (a carcinogen linked to cancer and anemia) into Channelview’s skies, according to the cover story in the Houston Press from December 2009. More benzene was emitted in a few hours than what is considered acceptable for the entire year — TCEQ simply turned their head the other way and did not press charges or fine the factory for the “accident”.

The EPA requires that refineries report any situation involving the release of more than 10 pounds of benzene, albeit TCEQ has the final say in Texas.

The Houston Press has been investigating the politics of TCEQ for about 6.5 years now, and their results do not bode well for TCEQ’s reputation.

The Houston Press found that:

• More than 20 million pounds of pollutants, 450,000 of which are known carcinogens, were emitted due to equipment breakdowns or unscheduled maintenance, startup or shutdown events
• TCEQ rarely took ­enforcement action, and when the agency did, the fines were nominal and in most cases later significantly reduced
• The plants with the most violations paid the lowest percentage of their fines
• TCEQ is so understaffed that it can take years to finalize penalties, and some critics say it avoids assessing time-consuming violations altogether
• And, as a matter of policy, TCEQ strayed from federal law by combining multiple federal permit violations into a single state violation, thereby giving industry a break by assessing fewer and less costly penalties

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) appoints the commissioners for TCEQ, and TCEQ receives most of its funding from — you guessed it — the companies that run the refineries. This is an extreme example of a conflict of interest, according to the Press.

Additionally, the federally mandated Clean Air Act considers any level of emissions above the allowed amount a violation. It also requires that each chemical emitted be counted as a single “speciation” and therefore, a separate violation. TCEQ, however, considers each accident involving a refinery as a violation — regardless of the number of chemicals emitted. The EPA sees this as multiple violations, while TCEQ sees it as only one. This “difference of opinion” gives the industry a huge break and allows refineries to get away with so much more than they should:

The Press discovered that individual chemicals at the 20 facilities [examined] exceeded the limit 12,701 times during the six and a half years.

TCEQ documents obtained through an open records request for the 20 plants show that the agency found 469 violations over the past six and a half years, 240 of which listed excess pollution during an emission event as the reason. Those 240 violations represent less than 2 percent of the number of times that individual pollutants exceeded their limit during emission events.

No wonder Houston has been coined “The Smog Capital of America” over and over again.

Former TCEQ Commissioner Larry Soward thinks that TCEQ should operate according to speciation but gives a glimpse into why they don’t:

That wasn’t something that they felt like they could do or should do. The agency always errs conservatively, and I think it should err on the side of the environment and public health as opposed to erring on the side of whether industry thinks it’s something it can afford and wants to do.

TCEQ also has a maximum fine allotted to the companies it oversees, and they can only fine up to $10,000 dollars a day for any amount of violations. Soward believes that TCEQ and the companies operating the refineries use this statue as a crutch:

If a company knows that their only liability is $10,000 a day they can make a business decision based on that. They’ll say, ‘We emitted and we’ll probably continue to emit because all it’s going to cost us is $10,000 a day.’ It’s simply cheaper to pay the fine than it is to upgrade or replace aging or failing equipment.

Further proving that measly fines don’t deter dirty dumping into the air, Matthew Tejada, executive director of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention, put together the following data based off a study he helped conduct:

In 2007 at least 80 percent of companies in the Houston region that received a violation were repeat offenders and had previously been penalized for that same violation. Nearly half of the facilities had ten or more similar infractions and some had more than 50.

In fact, LyondellBasell’s Houston Refining plant (the company just granted a 10-year permit from TCEQ) was cited for 44 violations in 2007, adding up to a total fine of $467,306. TCEQ made LyondellBassell pay only 29 percent of that amount.

So what does all this mean?

A plethora of environmental and health effects have resulted from TCEQ’s ignorance. One instance that the Press addresses is an accident that occurred on March 23, 2005 at the British Petroleum refinery in Texas City. 15 workers were  killed and 150 workers were injured when petroleum overflowed from the fire stacks and caused an explosion. The US Chemical Safety Board determined that the explosion could have been prevented if TCEQ had done its job — the explosion happened because the plant sent chemicals directly into the air through a vent that TCEQ was unaware of. According to the Press:

“It’s a classic example of incompetence and indifference and the agency’s inability to do the job,” says Jim Tarr, who helped set up the Texas environmental agency’s Houston office in the 1970s and now runs a consulting company in California that was involved in one of the post-explosion lawsuits against BP.

According to court papers, state regulators never knew about or permitted the emissions source, a vent, that led to the explosion, meaning its use was illegal.

For 30 years, says Tarr, every time BP applied for a permit, the company never told TCEQ about the vent. And TCEQ never found it.

“Permit engineers at TCEQ never asked the right questions to figure out if it was present and operating and needed to be controlled,” he says. “The primary responsibility was clearly BP’s, but TCEQ had a contingent responsibility as clear as the nose on my face. And their failure to do that contributed to the death of those people.”

The citizens of Houston, especially those living near the ship channel, put their confidence in the companies operating the refineries. Companies estimate that 98-99 percent of the chemicals released through the stacks at the refineries are burned at the top of the stacks. This method of combustion is a common sight along the freeways leading to Galveston or Baytown, and the public trusts the workings of the refineries.

The problem arises, however, from the word estimate:

“In reality,” says Joshua Kratka, an attorney with the National Environmental Law Center in Boston, who has worked on several cases dealing with emission events in Texas, “it is most likely extremely rare that those flares are operating at that efficiency.”

Kratka, like many others, blames underreporting and an enforcement system that puts too much trust in companies and is easy to abuse.

In an e-mail, TCEQ says that the facilities use “widely-accepted methods” and are “thoroughly familiar with their plant and have information about the event…to calculate the emissions.”

The amount of emissions companies report is merely a mathematical calculation based off of estimates. These are not actual measurements, meaning that the numbers companies give to TCEQ are probably much lower than they are in reality.

In 2008, the City of Houston conducted a 6-month survey monitoring, by air, seven different areas near the ship channel. Six out of the seven areas showed amounts of benzene in the air that was 10 times the acceptable risk. Dr. Charles Koller, a leukemia specialist at MD Anderson, told the Press, “It’s shocking to me. It seems, frankly, criminal.”

And benzene is just one of many chemicals floating around in the air of Houston.

Jim Tarr, quoted previously, sums it up well:

Those numbers in the reports have zero value unless they can be documented and the agency doesn’t look at the documentation and doesn’t require the companies to justify their numbers in general. Whatever the company says, the agency buys.

I’ve been doing environmental work all over this country for 30 years and TCEQ is without a doubt the worst environmental regulatory agency operating in the United States of America in 2009. That’s my experience. And it’s extremely disturbing and extremely sad.

The permit approval Wednesday was a slap in the face to environmentalists and Houstonians alike, although it should have been expected given TCEQ’s history. Maybe they need to take the phrase “Environmental Quality” out of their name and replace it with something like “Perry’s Bitches” or “Environmentally Ignorant”. I’m kidding, mostly, but until precise measurements are taken and revealed to the public, TCEQ will continue to have the audacity to call its work ethically and legally sound.

Baby steps towards healthier air, however, will hopefully be taken in April. TCEQ’s permit-granting procedure is scheduled to be reviewed by the Texas Legislative via the Sunset process.

20 Houston-area plants examined by the Houston Press (c).

PDF version of the chart above.

This may or may not be true. But it makes sense. Houston is a dirty, dirty city – at least it makes for great sunsets.

The EPA is working on setting  stricter smog controls, after Houston finally met the appropriate level for the first time last year.

The allowable smog level will be between 60 and 70 parts ozone per billion parts air, down from the 84 parts per billion, set in 1997, that Houston met last year.

The EPA says the tighter standard reflects research showing that smog poses greater health risks than previously thought. Ozone is the main ingredient in smog, and chronic exposure can trigger asthma attacks, chest pains and premature death.

I’m all for cleaning up the air, but a lot of Houstonians are not. The refineries and factories that create a city-scape in areas such as Baytown and Clearlake provide the one thing in high demand right now: jobs.

The proposed White Stallion Energy Center, a coal plant, is waiting for its permits from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality so construction can begin.

The plant would be built less than 20 miles from the boundary of the eight-county Houston region that was long in violation of federal limits for smog or ozone. Rules on industrial pollution — in particular, new sources — are tighter inside such areas than outside, even though smog ignores county lines.

The EPA is not in charge of granting the company their permits, but the federal group can stop the TCEQ if it deems it necessary to do so. Until then, it’s up to the state whether or not the coal plant is built.

So exactly how much damage would this one, measly plant cause?

Other proposed coal plants in Texas, however, would emit smog-forming pollution at a lower rate than the White Stallion facility, which would pump more than 4,000 tons of nitrogen oxides into the air each year — as much as 4.8 million cars — and increase Houston’s ozone level by 2 parts per billion, according to environmental groups.

Two parts per billion- this seems slightly ridiculous considering the EPA’s new allowable smog level could be between 14-24 parts per billion lower than their old standard, which Houston JUST met.

It will be interesting to follow this story until a decision is made, and I’ll try my best to do so.