Foot-draggers: Regulators are too willing to grant polluters leeway; Mayor White is right to set a deadline

Houston Chronicle Op-Ed ...

Nov. 13, 2007 -- The impatience of Houston Mayor Bill White with the timetable for cleaning up Houston's tainted air is understandable. The mayor held off on his own enforcement plan for months while a group sponsored by the Greater Houston Partnership, which included chemical industry executives, studied alternatives.

Not surprisingly, the group concluded that industry should police itself and be given a chance to install new monitoring technologies to see if the approach works. The task force's chairman, Dan Woltermann, said the city should wait a year to see the results.

Also recommended was a public education forum on clean air to inform citizens on how to help improve air quality. Other than to stop breathing, there is little the public can do to avoid documented high levels of benzene and other carcinogens being emitted by industrial facilities in the Houston area.

he task force's go-slow approach is mirrored on the state level, where Gov. Rick Perry appealed to the federal government this summer to delay enforcement of Environmental Protection Agency standards for smog-causing ozone in the Houston-Galveston area for an additional nine years, until 2019. That's far more lenient than an extension to 2013 supported by Houston and Harris County officials.

Mayor White postponed a city plan last spring to use nuisance ordinances to crack down on sources of toxic emissions outside the city. During the postponement, the task force was to come up with alternatives. The mayor's plan would have the city set its own standards for emissions of air toxics and then use its nuisance ordinance to sue violators. After it was unveiled, officials of neighboring municipalities where the industrial offenders are located protested. After White met with them the proposal was put on hold and subjected to further study. During the last session of the Texas Legislature, several lawmakers attempted but failed to outlaw the use of nuisance ordinances to curb pollution.

The latest task force recommendations appear to be a continuation of the failed policy of letting industry set the method and tempo of pollution reduction. Experience suggests that industry cannot police itself without government regulation. Some plants have had 30 years or more to reduce toxic emissions to safe levels. How much longer should Houstonians have to wait?

Houston needs cleaner air. If the state won't enforce adequate clean air standards, it's up to city government to fill the gap.

Mayor White says he'll give industry six months to show results from voluntary efforts, or he will proceed to implement the city's enforcement plan. "If we have eight meetings about this, but the level of benzene goes up," White said, "the community will have been defrauded."

Given the time that the process has already consumed, six months seems more than an adequate interval for industry to demonstrate it is serious about cleaning up its act.