Court rules for cleaner Triangle air

December 12, 2002

By ANGELA WEAVER-Port Arthur News Staff Writer
Port Arthur News

Environmentalists are claiming a major victory for residents of the Beaumont-Port Arthur area in a ruling by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the EPA is in violation of the Clean Air Act for delaying the implementation of a clean-up plan for the area's dirty air.

"This is a major victory for every resident in the Golden Triangle," Neil Carman, Ph.D., Clean Air Program Director for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, said. "You usually can't see this pollution, but it affects all of us, especially the elderly, the sick and kids with asthma. It shortens lives and for lots of kids, it makes it unsafe for them to play outside. It's just a shame that it takes a court ruling to make the EPA carry out the law the way it was written."

In July 2001 the Sierra Club filed suit to compel the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to speed up the deadline it had given the Beaumont-Port Arthur area to comply with national ozone standards.

"Adults with asthma and other lung conditions are also hard-hit by ozone," Carman said. "Breathing in too much ozone is like getting a sunburn on the lungs. It physically damages the tissue and kills lung cells."

The ruling, which came late Wednesday, addressed two questions.

The first issue was whether the EPA had violated the Clean Air Act by granting an extension of the statutory deadline for meeting national standards for ozone pollution in the Beaumont area and in approving a "SIP," or state implementation plan, for the area based on that extension. The SIP is the comprehensive plan for cleaning up the region's air.

The Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 established November 15, 1996 as the compliance deadline for areas like Beaumont-Port Arthur. In December 2000, the EPA extended the region's compliance deadline until 2007. With that deferral, the Sierra Club said the EPA had effectively given industry in the Golden Triangle an 11-year pollution extension.

"I haven't seen the decision, so I can't comment on it specifically, but the region's argument to the EPA was really a compelling one that demonstrated one of the major problems with the region was transport," John Johnson, assistant to the county judge and member of the Air Quality Advisory Committee for the Southeast Texas Regional Planning Commission, said. " As long as Houston's air quality doesn't comply with the Act, it is going to be impossible for the Beaumont/Port Arthur area to comply. That has been demonstrated beyond question.

"Essentially the EPA tied our compliance date to Houston's date because the agency recognized that even with our best efforts, we would not be able to comply," he added. "We documented several incidences that demonstrated when Houston experienced an exceedance, two to three days later, the Beaumont/Port Arthur area had an exceedance."

Johnson also said industry in the Beaumont/Port Arthur area have spent millions of dollars over the past several years to upgrade and replace equipment to meet EPA emission standards.

The Court, however, ruled in favor of the Sierra Club that the EPA was in error by granting the area an extension on its compliance deadline.

The second question considered by the Court was whether the EPA had reasonably interpreted the Clean Air Act as not requiring any additional air pollution control measures in the Beaumont area's SIP. The Fifth Circuit said the Reasonably Achievable Control Measures (RACMs) approved by EPA complied with the Clean Air Act.

But since the SIP extension was ruled illegal and remanded back to EPA, the second ruling is legally moot, according to the Sierra Club, because now the EPA will have to require a new SIP for the region, including a new set of control measures.

More than 20 years ago, the Beaumont-Port Arthur area was classified as "non-attainment" by the EPA for the one-hour ozone standard by exceeding the standard four times or more in a three year period. According the the Sierra Club, the region has exceeded the one-hour standard on numerous days each year.

For the purposes of enforcement of the Clean Air Act, the Beaumont-Port Arthur ozone region is comprised of Jefferson, Hardin and Orange Counties.

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