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LEAD-IN BY HOST FRED SCHIFF: Last week, state and federal agencies approved a decision to reject part of the Houston Galveston Area Clean Air Plan. Ilse Sedlmair has the story: STORY: In May of this year, highway speed limits were reduced to 55 miles per hour as part of an attempt to reduce air pollution caused by gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. The speed limit change was unpopular with motorists, and difficult to enforce. But as spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Patrick Crimmons explains, it was worth a try: "We are having to choose just about every known stategy to reduce air pollution in the Houston area because of the severity of the air quality problem there." On Wednesday of last week, state environmental regulators asked the US Environmental Protection Agency, or the EPA, to now reject the speed limit changes. When the EPA agreed, even environmentalists didn’t complain too much. Lower speed limits would have made only a miniscule difference in air pollution in the region. The original plan to reduce speed limits was based on modeling that was done several years ago. EPA employee, Dave Barry explains how more recent science indicates the reduction would not make as big a difference as originally expected: "A newer more technolgoically advanced model was developed just recently that showed the expected reductions in nitrous oxides from that speed limit would be half of what was previously anticipated." Barry says other changes to this region’s Clean Air Plan may come after a mid-course review is completed in 2004. The entire plan will be reviewed from top to bottom to see if it can be improved or changed in any way that would allow for further reductions in air pollution. Executive director of the Galveston Houston Area Smog Prevention organization, John Wilson, says the decision to reject the speed limit reduction points to broader problems with this region’s plan to reduce pollution: "The state has an incomplete plan for reducing air pollution right now. And it's unfortunate that rather than completing the plan, they’re actually increasing the problems with it." Wilson’s environmental organization is mostly concerned with pollution from industrial sources. "Indusry right now is asking for its pollution standards to be doubled, reulting in five to ten times more air polluton than the speed limit would have ever psoibbly controled. And that's the big story of 2002, and its' been ignored almost completely. But the speed limit has gotten an enormous amount of attention, and environmentalists have been alternatively blamed or ridiculed, when we weren't really pushing for it. It wasn't on the top of our lists." A decision on reducing emission standards for industry polluters is scheduled in three weeks. Wilson expects lobbyists will have some success in pushing for lower standards. Ilse Sedlmair, KPFT News, Houston.
E-mail Ilse Sedlmair at news@kpft.org .
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