County had no violations of federal standards in 2004 and 2005, official says.
By By Ad Crable
Published Aug 09, 2006 13:42
In 2004, the American Lung Association drove home a dagger by labeling Lancaster’s ozone pollution the 23rd-worst in the nation.
Young children, the elderly and people with asthma and other lung ailments have been repeatedly warned to watch out on boiling hot summer days.
But now, thanks to new federally mandated coal-plant cleanups and new statewide measures, the state says the air over Lancaster County has significantly improved and is no longer in violation of federal clean-air standards.
As a result, the state Department of Environmental Protection has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to officially list the county in compliance and to take the heat off.
“It’s very encouraging,” Terry Black, a DEP official, said Tuesday afternoon at a public hearing in Lancaster on the request. He noted that “we’ve had a very hot summer” and there have been no episodes of ozone exceeding federal limits.
Nor were there any federal violations in 2004 or 2005, though there were ozone-warning days.
Though there is ozone pollution originating here from automobile exhausts and other sources, bad air here largely drifts in from upwind states in the Midwest — and western Pennsylvania — with concentrations from polluting power plants.
Tougher pollution standards under the federal Clean Air Act are dramatically reducing volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides from those coal-fired plants, Black said.
VOCs, nitrogen oxides and automobile exhausts bake in the sun to form hazy ozone, commonly called smog.
The state’s request to the feds says that despite continued growth and more vehicles in Lancaster County over the next 10 to 20 years, ozone levels will not increase.
That’s largely because of power plant cleanups from upwind plants, Black says.
Beyond that, older vehicles are being retired in favor of cleaner-burning ones, he notes.
A controversial state-initiated Clean Vehicle Program would require all vehicles beginning with 2008 models to be cleaner and more fuel-efficient than federal laws require.
The General Assembly is attempting to pull the plug on the Rendell-backed initiative.
Even if Lancaster County is certified to be in attainment for ozone, anti-ozone measures put in place here in recent years would not be rescinded.
That’s because of an “anti-sliding” rule by the EPA.
Thus, the $40 or so county residents have had to fork over annually for vehicle emissions inspections since 2004 will not be pulled by DEP, though there is a movement in the General Assembly to do just that.
Nor will the new composition — sometimes more expensive — of paints, varnishes and other consumer products that emit pollutants be changed here, according to Black.
The lone person to speak at Tuesday’s public hearing, Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association of Pennsylvania, warned that smog levels here are still far from healthy.
Though not considered in violation, there have been “a great number of bad air days” in recent years, said Stewart. He has worked on a local-state committee to improve ozone levels here.
“We would be remiss if we failed to acknowledge that air quality in Lancaster is still not where it should be, and in fact, may not be improving as rapidly as we would hope,” Stewart said.
He predicted there is a 40 percent chance that Lancaster will violate the ozone level in 2007 and again be a nonattainment area.
Moreover, the existing ozone standard is too weak to protect public health, he said. He called on DEP to be out in front in protecting public health and to tighten ozone standards.
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