TCEQ Executive Director to recommend remanding Las Brisas permit

New Ozone Standards likely to put Corpus Christi out of Attainment without LB

According to sources in the environmental community, it appears that TCEQ Executive Director Mark Vickers will ask the three TCEQ Commissioners to remand the Las Brisas permit. The Commissioners could ignore the recommendation and grant the permit, but with the EPA looking over their shoulder it is questionable whether they are willing to go the mat for a big polluter.

Remand could vary from basically starting over to going back and negotiating with the State Office of Administrative Hearings through their process to attempt to reach a compromise that could be put forward at a later date. Either of those would be preferable to the company than a denial of the permit.

Las Brisas and Corpus Christi could be at the cusp of the developing State-Federal fight between Perry and Obama’s EPA. One Perry no doubt will try to exploit for campaign contributions.

Regarding Ozone, Kasey Savanich faced a full house of officials and staff from the port, area communities and counties, industry representatives, university professors, representatives of the Sierra Club and interested public all eager to hear what might happen when the EPA issues new Ozone Guidelines. The new standard will be published August 31, 2010 and area designations regarding attainment to be announced in August 2011.

The two significant issues that concerned most of those in the audience were, how would the new requirements impact the local economy and what areas would be included in the measurement area. The Primary Ozone level for an area is set based on averaging the fourth highest eight hour averages from three years and dropping any decimals. In 2008 the allowable level was moved from .08 parts per million (ppm) to .075 ppm, in spite of recommendations from EPA Scientists that it be set at least at least as low as .070.

The 2010 proposed revision to the standard will revise it down somewhere between .060 ppm to .070 ppm and the decimals will not be dropped from the eight hour averages before being averaged, but will be rounded up or down. The samples are taken from only two indicators, one in Tuloso Midway and one on the Crosstown Freeway. Ozone forms after sunlight combines different emissions from industry and vehicles to form ground level ozone. It tends to form as the emissions move away from the sources.

If the level is set at .065 ppm, Nueces County alone will be ruled to be marginally out of attainment. If the Combined Statistical Area is considered which would include Aransas, San Patricio, Nueces, Kleberg and Kenedy Counties would all be out of attainment.

Many public officials pled for other counties to not be placed in the same Combined Statistical Area (CSA) as they said they didn’t share economic ties. Yet they do share high asthma and birth defect rates (see We the People Print Edition). San Patricio which has a spread out rural population gets most of the pollution from the south east (Nueces County industry) because of prevailing winds. They also have higher asthma and birth defect rates than Nueces County without the benefit of the economic impact. What San Patricio County has benefited greatly from is the ongoing expansion of wind farms which bring lease money, jobs and tax base without pollution. While not adding to the problem they suffer the consequences downwind.

That was also a plea from local officials, that our pollution comes from some where else and isn’t our fault. While we do get pollution from other areas, we have never once expressed any interest in the impact of our pollution on others (i.e. San Patricio County). In fact it is frequently repeated that we don’t have to worry about the pollution because the wind blows the other way. No one ever says where to and that is only 70% of the time. Kleberg County is even higher than both Nueces and San Pat in Asthma and Birth Defects and along with Jim Wells make a cluster of ill health, where something is obviously going on, and its obviously not all drifting here from Houston.

It’s understandable why some here are claiming foul after local industry has worked with the Sierra Club and others to lower Ozone rates here over the last few years to keep the region in attainment. That however is not the issue, instead it is about improved knowledge about what levels impact human health and how severely. The standards are set based on that without regard to impact on cost.

Adame, Neal and others asked for the current voluntary efforts to be able to continue. The elephant in the living room was Las Brisas, promising to double the pollution in the county, the pet coke burning power plant would probably shove Corpus Christi from marginally to severely impaired, the day it opened. It is a project every political leader there pleading for moderation on the standards, eagerly and openly championed in spite of estimates from environmental groups that it would push us out of attainment under the old standard.