The Environmental Protection Agency is taking aim at the nation’s smog levels.
The agency released tougher standards for ozone emissions Wednesday.
Ground-level ozone is a primary concern for lung health--exacerbating diseases like asthma. Car tailpipes contribute to it. So do power plants and oil and gas development.
Our Inside Energy Reporter Dan Boyce reports from Denver--long considered a success story in reducing ozone.
Air quality has been a concern in Colorado for decades.
DOC: “Thousands of pounds of air pollution could be spewed into the atmosphere every dayy…”
You’re hearing a 1982 documentary from Denver public television station KRMA, Tackling an issue front and center for local residents.
DOC: “Some say the clean air act should be strengthened to protect Western Colorado and other clean areas from a Brown Cloud.”
Lifelong Coloradan Cheri Jahn remembers the skies back then.
JAHN: “Oh, it was horrible, absolutely.”
“Brown cloud” wasn’t hyperbole, it was a literal thing.
The Mile High City was famous for it, especially on hot summer days.
JAHN: “So any time you would go outside of Denver and then come back in, it was the brown cloud.”
Major amendments to the Clean Air Act over the past few decades have given the federal government much greater authority to regulate air pollutants like ozone. It’s done on the basis of air monitoring.
(Bring AMBI Up of Denver Air Monitoring site.)
SVITAK: “So, this is one of several ozone pollution monitoring sites around the Denver metro area...”
Tyler Svitak (Swee-dock) of the American Lung Association’s Colorado chapter meets me at a small, one-story brick building near the heart of downtown.
Thin metal tubes and pipes poke out of the top, sniffing the air.
Stations like this can be found all over the country, in high ozone areas.
Data from these sites help gauge the effectiveness of ozone control measures--like requiring cleaner gasoline and scrubbers on power plants.
And Denver has made major progress.
SVITAK: “You know, our brown cloud has gotten significantly better, but our science has gotten better too and science is telling us the regulations aren’t where they need to be yet.”
Svitak and the EPA say it’s science leading the Obama administration’s push to lower the acceptable ozone threshold for the first time since 2008.
The science of how much our lungs can handle, particularly those of the young and elderly.
But, like with so many arguments over regulation, it comes down economics.
SVITAK: Missing days of school, missing days of work.”
Svitak says the costs of higher ozone levels are clear. Less healthy people, more of the time.
Cheri Jahn, the lifelong Coloradan who witnessed the Brown Cloud of the 70s and 80s, she’s a Democratic State Senator now. Though she cares about clean air, she thinks the new threshhold is too strict.
JAHN: “You know what it almost feels like, they are setting us up to fail.”
Despite serious effort, the state’s highly-populated Front Range is still not meeting the 2008 ozone standards.
Federal transportation dolars and other funding can be at risk for areas not in compliance.
JAHN: “We cannot afford to lose one dollar, because we already don’t get enough.”
Just outside Jahn’s office, construction workers are pouring concrete as part of a road project. Forbes ranks Denver one of the fastest growing cities in the country, and traffic can be a total mess. But road construction in high ozone areas must go through heightened scrutiny to make sure the project does not increase ozone.
The Associated General Contractors of America is a construction industry trade group. Spokesman Brian Turmail says a stricter ozone standard will just mean more red tape bogging down more road projects in more areas of the country.
TURMAIL: “The last thing you want if you’re trying to protect the air quality is to force more commuters to spend even more time idling their vehicles while they’re stuck in traffic.”
Nationally, ozone levels fell more than 30 percent from 1980 to last year.
The EPA predicts the new standards will cost billions, but savings in health benefits will far outweigh that.
