New ozone standard worries Nevada officials

State and local air quality officials braced for yet another challenge in reducing levels of the harmful ground-level pollutant ozone after an announcement late Wednesday by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson that he decided to tighten the standard.

The decision to make the eight-hour standard for smog-forming ozone more stringent -- from 80 parts per billion to 75 parts per billion -- was spurred by a court decision from a 2003 lawsuit filed against the EPA by Earthjustice on behalf of the American Lung Association and conservation groups.

But while Earthjustice attorneys bemoaned Tuesday's announcement, saying the new standard is a "baby step" that "still falls far short of the much stronger standard that scientists, doctors and public health experts said is needed to protect public health," air quality officials in Nevada said it was designed mainly to address concerns in the East and is being unfairly applied to cities and rural areas in the West.

"We have concerns about implementation once designations are made. ... It seems like they ignored how implementation would occur in sparsely populated, expansive areas of the Western region," said Greg Remer, chief of the Nevada Environmental Protection Division's Bureau of Air Pollution Control.

"They are afforded with lots of data in the East. In the West, we don't have monitors every 10 miles," he said.

Under the revised standard, Clark County most likely will be designated a nonattainment area for ozone with hundreds of other areas across the nation when the EPA issues its list in 2010. Once designated, the areas will have three years to develop plans that demonstrate they can comply with the standard in 20 years.

That means Clark County and possibly other areas of the state will have to spend more money on programs such as ride-sharing, cleaner-burning gasoline, and light rail and monorail projects, and take measures at truck stops to reduce pollution from idling diesel trucks.

Public awareness campaigns will be launched to reduce the number of vehicles on roads and warn motorists at gasoline stations not to top off their tanks or spill fuel when they fill up.

"It won't be cheap. People will have to make an effort," said Lewis Wallenmeyer, Clark County's air quality director.

Wallenmeyer and Remer said they have not begun to calculate how expensive implementing a plan to curb ozone will be.

Ozone is a summertime pollutant that irritates the lungs and especially affects children and the elderly and people who suffer from asthma and heart and lung diseases.

Johnson said the revised standard will meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act.

"The Clean Air Act is not a relic to be displayed in the Smithsonian," he said, "but a living document that must be modernized to continue realizing results.

"So while the standards I signed today may be strict, we have a responsibility to overhaul and enhance the Clean Air Act to ensure it translates from paper promises into cleaner air," Johnson said in a teleconference Wednesday from Washington, D.C.

Failing to meet the standard could result in federal management of an implementation plan or loss of federal highway funding in noncompliant areas, but EPA officials have said the possibility of that happening would be remote.

Clark County complied with the previous eight-hour standard from 2004 to 2006. It dropped into the nonattainment range last year with a violation in August.

On Wednesday, ground-level ozone in Las Vegas was 51 parts per billion over one hour and was 32 parts per billion averaged over eight hours. If the eight-hour standard is violated in a single day, that is enough to put the area in nonattainment.

What irks state and local air quality officials is that ozone pollution from outside Nevada that is transported into the state by air currents can be enough to trigger a violation, even in expansive rural areas. Models have shown that ozone reaches Nevada from Los Angeles, Arizona and Mexico and on rare occasions from the southeastern United States.

Ozone pollution can drift into Nevada from wildfires in Southern California and other areas of the West.

Michael Elges, chief of the Nevada Environmental Protection Division's Bureau of Air Quality Planning, weighed in on a more strict standard in October after it was proposed.

"Should a new, lower standard be established, Nevada's potential for growth, economic development and industrial diversification could be seriously curtailed due to emissions that are not generated in our state," he wrote to the EPA.

Unless EPA provides for alternatives for areas in the West, "we will be drawn into a costly and time-consuming regional planning effort to deal with a pollutant over which we have no control. We implore EPA ... to work with Western states to develop a more streamlined implementation approach that we can all afford to implement and one that won't unfairly penalize rural areas for being downwind," Elges wrote.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.