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Environment & Pollution
Houston has made headlines the past few years as the U.S. city with the worst air quality. So surprisingly, a consensus has emerged among environmentalists, policy makers and oil-industry scientists that improvements in air quality have been significant in the past 30 years, but there is still a lot to do.
“The air quality has improved as the emissions have been reduced over the last 30 years and it’s getting better,” said Doug Deason, an environmental advisor to Exxon- Mobil. “Over time things tend to improve. We are on an improvement scale.”
However, most recently, the federal government has relaxed a number of regulations for oil industries.
The Clean Air Act of 1977 established a regulatory framework for states to enforce rules and restrictions to create a healthy, productive environment, based upon a sound energy policy. The idea was that the framework would naturally create sustainable economic development.
In 1990, Congress revised the Clean Air Act because many of the guidelines of the original act were not being met.
In the revision, the one-hour standard was replaced with the eight-hour standard. The standard measures particulates, nitrogen, nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxides – the main culprits in acid rain.
According to Dr. Daewon Byun, director of the Institute for Multidimensional Air Quality Studies and professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Houston, says the rule change makes scientific tracking of emissions more difficult.
“Personally I don’t like the eight-hour standard,” said Dr. Daewon Byun, director of the Institute for Multidimensional Air Quality Studies and professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Houston. “It is too lax a standard compared to the one- hour standard for Houston. It makes it real difficult to track the cause and relationship of pollution problems. It makes it hard to pinpoint more seasonal change.”
The Toxics Release Inventory is a database made public by the Environment Protection Agency that lists the toxic chemical releases that industries must reported annually.
On September 2005, a rule came into effect reducing the amount of information on toxic releases that industry is required to disclose to the public. The modification supposedly simplifies the inventory to “improve reporting efficiency and effectiveness, reduce burden, and promote data reliability and consistency across agency programs.”
The Clear Skies Act, an initiative promoted by the current administration was introduced as "a bill to amend the Clean Air Act to reduce air pollution through expansion of cap-and-trade programs.”
But conservationist groups such as the Sierra Club describe "Clear Skies" as “propaganda.” They note that the initiative expands the pollution trading system which results in some communities getting cleaner while others don’t. They estimate that by 2018 the Clear Skies Act would allow 450,000 more tons of nitrous oxide, one million more tons of sodium dioxide and almost 10 million more tons of mercury than what would be allowed by enforcement of the Clean Air Act.
Apparently, one oil company has a different take on the current laws in effect.
“Think of it as any rules in your life. Those rules were changed, but that doesn’t mean things are worse,” said Margaret Ross, media advisor to Exxon-Mobil. “The public needs to trust the government. And trust reputable companies. And they should. You have to do that because you can’t walk around afraid all the time.”
Deason and Ross admit their employer has a different agenda. Keeping the environment clean is not their first priority.
“We all have slightly different interests,” said Deason. “Industry produces product for people first and foremost.”
The Business Coalition for Clean Air Appeal Group is the organization that represents industry in its efforts to weaken Houston's clean air plan. It has filed state and federal lawsuits with the goal of easing requirements on emissions.
“Any business’s goal is to make money,” said Byun. “It’s the nature of corporate culture. Emission control makes operations more expensive and makes the refineries less profitable. Government is the only force that can enforce regulations, yet the Congress seems willing to create loopholes for industries.”
“The fewer rules, the easier it is to increase your profits,” said John Wilson, the executive director of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention. “Weakening the laws is a clever strategy, as is changing interpretations. The courts have just said ‘we’ll defer to the agency even though what they say makes no sense’.”
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
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