Regional Reports: Region 6

Elizabeth Hurst
Vial, Hamilton, Koch & Knox, LLP
Dallas, Texas
Elizahurst@aol.com

Region 6 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it has signed the first compact under the Texas “Protocol for Early Action Compacts Designed To Achieve and Maintain the 8-hour Ozone Standard.” The Protocol outlines a program that allows areas that are borderline nonattainment to implement control measures aimed at reducing the emission of precursors of ozone formation under a short time line, thereby coming into attainment of the 8-hour ozone standard more quickly. Under the program, the local area commits to develop a clean air plan that includes local controls beyond current federal and state requirements necessary to bring the area into attainment of the 8-hour ozone standard by 2007. The state is then required to incorporate the area’s control measures into an enforceable SIP by Dec. 31, 2004. Based on these commitments, EPA defers the effective date of a nonattainment designation, thereby suspending designation requirements through Dec. 31, 2007, so long as all terms and milestones of the compact are being met and the area demonstrates attainment of the 8-hour standard by 2007. Local elected officials from the four-county area (Bexar, Comal, Guadalupe and Wilson counties), the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the EPA signed the San Antonio Metropolitan Statistical Area 8-hour Ozone Compact on Monday, Dec. 9, 2002 at a signing ceremony in San Antonio, Texas. This was the first such compact to be signed. The document was prepared by the Air Improvement Resources Board of the Alamo Area Council of Governments and is referred to locally as the San Antonio Clean Air Plan. Other Region 6 areas that have submitted draft 8-hour Ozone Compact agreements include Austin, Texas; the Northeast Texas Area; Shreveport/Bossier City, Louisiana; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) approved the first international emission control project in Texas based on legislation passed during the 77th session, which allows grandfathered electric utilities in the El Paso area to meet their emission allowance requirements by substituting reductions achieved in the city of Juarez, Mexico, as long as the reductions resulted in an overall improvement in air quality for the entire Juarez-El Paso area. El Paso Electric Company is the first to implement this alternative means to achieve emission reductions. The electric company has agreed to replace 60 primitive brick making kilns in Juarez with a more efficient closed-top kiln that will help in reducing pollutants of concern by 198 tons per year.