An independent board tasked with improving Colorado’s air quality believes the state will not meet an Environmental Protection Agency requirement to reduce toxic air pollution by 2024, but will be able to meet an older, lax emissions reduction goal. three years later.
Critics argue that Colorado’s plan to meet those goals falls short, continuing a pattern that led the EPA earlier this year to announce plans to downgrade the air quality rating of the northern Front Range.
And every time the state falls short of its goals to reduce air pollution, it jeopardizes the health of Coloradans living along the Front Range, and it becomes more expensive to fix because more regulations are imposed on industries. such as oil and gas, trucking, and manufacturing. .
“If we don’t act, it costs us time. It costs us additional requirements,” said Danny Katz, executive director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group. “This is a really crucial moment. We cannot wait another few years to act.”
The Regional Air Quality Council, an independent board appointed by the governor, will approve a plan to reduce harmful ground-level ozone emissions at a meeting on August 5. The proposal, known as the State Implementation Plan, must also be approved by the state Air Quality Control Commission, which is expected to consider it in September, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Regional Air Quality Council Executive Director Mike Silverstein said Tuesday during a news conference that Colorado has two National Ambient Air Quality Standards to meet.
First, it must meet a standard adopted in 2008 that calls for ozone emissions to be reduced to 75 parts per billion annually by 2027, and state air quality models indicate that will happen. Second, Colorado must meet a more stringent standard set in 2015 to reduce ozone emissions even sooner, to 70 parts per billion by 2024.
“We don’t expect to reach that strict standard in two short years,” Silverstein said. “It is not possible to get us to meet the next due date.”
The targets seem off the mark as the previous deadline with a stricter standard will be missed, while the 2027 target, with looser standards, is within reach. But Colorado hasn’t met national air quality standards since 2012, so its target date for the 2008 standard is still moving forward, said David Sabados, a spokesman for the air quality council.
Colorado needs to reduce its emissions of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds because those chemicals combine on hot, sunny days to form a chemical reaction that creates ground-level ozone. That ozone causes smog that affects people’s respiratory systems, making it difficult to breathe and complicating other pre-existing health conditions like asthma.
And as the climate warms, it becomes harder to make improvements because the hotter it gets, the more drastic the pollution becomes, said Gregg Thomas, director of the environmental quality division at the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. .
Thomas, who participated in a press conference with people who want the state’s implementation plan to go further, said he has been working on ozone issues for 20 years and is frustrated by the series of unmet goals that continue to lead to the EPA to degrade air quality.
“Every time we go through this iteration, we’re hopeful that the next time it happens, if it happens again, we’ll actually have gotten to the standard,” Thomas said. “It’s frustrating for us and for the public.”
In April, the EPA announced plans to degrade Denver and the northern Front Range “serious” violators of federal ozone standards from “serious” violators, a move that would trigger new regulations, including requiring Front Range motorists to fill their cars and trucks with more expensive reformulated gasoline.
The EPA is expected to make that designation official later this year.
If that happens, hundreds of businesses in the state will also be reclassified as big polluters, meaning they will have to apply for more complex federal emissions permits and spend more money to limit the pollutants they put into the atmosphere.
That’s why the Colorado Public Interest Research Group, the cities of Denver, Aurora, Boulder and Broomfield, and environmental groups are pushing the regional air council to go further. recently sent a letter to the council with nine recommendations they want to add to the statewide implementation plan.
Those recommendations include:
- Following California in adopting lower vehicle emissions standards
- Put limits on oil and gas production during the hot summer months
- Create more programs that encourage the use of public transport
- Minimizing the use of flares at the Suncor Energy refinery in Commerce City
- Change rules for commercial and residential appliances to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions
For now, the regional air council’s plan does not include drastic changes. The proposal has contingency plans in play if the EPA says they are necessary. Those plans include changes to regulations for the architectural and industrial use of adhesives, paints and coatings.
Thomas, who has served on the regional air council, said he understands the council’s position in trying to balance costs with the need to improve air quality, but wants the council to mandate strategies that achieve significant reductions in air pollution. ozone.
“It is possible that sometimes we do not agree on the urgency and the rigor of the control measures. But we all want clean air,” she said. “We are making progress in other areas of air pollution, but ozone is a big problem.”
The Regional Air Quality Council is accepting public comments on its State Implementation Plan through Wednesday at tinyurl.com/2p88v8h8. To learn more about the proposal visit tinyurl.com/2v2875em.