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STORY: The Environmental Protection Agency says Texas must find a way to fund the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan to keep the state in compliance with federal clean air laws. Failure to fund the plan means that Texas will lose all federal highway funds.
An alliance of environmental groups called Clean Texas proposed to fund the plan with a fee on high sulfur diesel. High sulfur diesel pollutes more than low sulfur diesel but low sulfur diesel costs more because it is refined. Tom Smith, of Public Citizen, supports the fee as an economic incentive to buy low sulfur diesel: "Essentially what this would do is help reduce the added cost of low sulfur gasoline or diesel, the less sulfur the fewer emissions there are out of the tail pipe." The reduction plan controls mobile source pollution like exhaust from large trucks but the reduction plan does not control stationary source pollution from refineries. Recently, the Premcor refinery in Port Arthur opened a new facility to make low sulfur diesel and the people living next to the refinery say pollution has increased. Denny Larson with the Refinery Reform Campaign supports the fee but says it is a pollution trade-off: "We get less comin' out of the tail pipe but we get more comin' out of the smoke stacks and until that is really addressed just cleaning up the fuel is a no-win solution. The gas is cleaner at the cost of the health and safety of the neighbors." David Stiles, KPFT News, Houston.
E-mail David Stiles at stiles138@yahoo.com .
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