Parts Of Houston Will Miss Ozone Cleanup Deadline By Nine Years - Ready By 2017 - Chronicle

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These three locations — each the site of a state-run air-pollution monitor — pose the biggest challenge to Texas' clean-air goals. Though 18 of 22 monitors in the Houston area are expected to reach the standard in time, even leveling the Ship Channel would not get Bayland Park, Deer Park and Aldine there by the 2009 ozone season, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. It takes only one monitor above the standard for the entire region to be out of compliance.

"Houston is like the perfect recipe for efficient ozone formation," said TCEQ Chairman Kathleen Hartnett White of the city's large industrial complex, traffic, population growth and weather. "We didn't get very close to attainment by eliminating the Ship Channel and all of its sources. Two of the key monitors were still very significantly ... above the standard."

But it's the East Harris County industrial corridor, according to Matt Fraser, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University, that largely is to blame for all three hot spots. The typical scenario begins with industrial plants and ships along the channel releasing nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, Fraser said. Mixed in sunlight, these chemicals create ground-level ozone, triggering the high levels at Deer Park. The plume is then blown east or north, picking up more pollution from sources such as cars and trees as it moves. Eventually, it reaches Bayland Park, or Aldine.

"These are all emissions from the Ship Channel; it just depends on which way the wind is blowing," Fraser said. "Under certain meteorological conditions it will be very difficult to control."

For these reasons, Gov. Rick Perry is likely to ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency later this year to reclassify Houston's smog problem from "moderate" to "serious" or "severe." Such a downgrading would give the region an additional three to nine years to reduce pollution, to allow enough time for federal controls on automobiles to take effect and to evaluate the latest research on ozone formation in the region.

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/4505166.html