Texas City is in compliance for ozone. Houston may be soon.
Never thought I’d hear those words.
Those of us who have followed the constant battle of local industries to meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act have heard for years that we might get rid of too much carbon dioxide and we might rein in all those volatile organic compounds and we might even lick the prevalence of nitrous oxide, but we’d never beat back ozone.
The Environmental Protection Agency had thus decreed.
Ozone comes in two packages, as you may know. There is good ozone up there in the atmosphere, which protects the earth from burning up.
There is bad ozone, the kind we have been battling. It makes people sick, especially people with pulmonary problems.
We get ozone when sunshine reacts with chemicals in the air in just the right (or wrong) way. In recent times, those chemicals have been identified and names as “ozone precursors” and folks who manage these things have found a way to lessen the amounts of chemicals, thus finally bringing the ozone levels into a manageable amount.
This is a simplistic — remembered from past meetings — explanation and if you want to know more about ozone, you’ll have to ask somebody smarter than I.
Anyway, the EPA is apparently happy, and the industries, especially those on the ship channel, are happy.
We should be happy, too.
And we will be, as long as the EPA keeps its requirements at the present level.
Or course, it may not. According to Lou Fowler, the EPA can up the ante next April.
Fowler presented the findings of the Texas City-La Marque Community Monitoring Network to members of the Community Advisory Committee at a recent meeting.
He called the ozone findings, as well as all the other measurements of local pollutants, “a real success story.”
The network reported from monitoring stations on 34th Street and on Second Avenue in Texas City.
You’ve seen all the graphs showing the fall of the stock market. Well, that’s what all the monitors show for NOX (nitrous oxide), SO2 (sulfur dioxide) and VOCs (volatile organic chemicals) including what the industries call “the big five” chemicals. That includes benzene. Benzene has been a big pain in Texas City, but apparently, no more.
In other news, from a couple of the industries:
• Larry Schmidt, of Dow, said the company is closing and demolishing its solution vinyl resins unit, losing 50 jobs, which it may be able to absorb.
• Walter Treybig, of Sterling, said the company will shut down the styrene unit but is looking into a future coke gasification unit, which could cost $2 billion.
A team from the Texas City National Future Farmers of America Organization opened the program with a debate on the planting of corn to make fuel to replace gasoline, which provides a new source of fuel but also sends streams of fertilizers into the bay waters, making dead zones that kill fish.
They didn’t reach a conclusion. And we didn’t, either.
Cathy Gillentine is a columnist for The Daily News. She may be reached at cgillentine1(at)sbcglobal.net.
