EPA issues county air standard

Monday, Sept. 13, 2004 | 10:50 a.m.

Clark County's day of reckoning with smog has arrived.

Friday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formally identified the area of the county that must meet new, stricter air quality standards for ozone, the potentially dangerous prime component of smog.

The county's Department of Air Quality and Environmental Management now has three years to develop a plan to comply with the new health-based EPA standard.

The new standards were expected. The federal agency originally established the rules in 1997, but implementation was held up by a lengthy court challenge filed by industry groups.

Ground-level ozone aggravates existing respiratory problems and can damage the lungs of healthy people. Ozone at ground level is distinct from the gas at high altitudes, where it helps shield the Earth from dangerous ultraviolet radiation.

At ground level, ozone is created by a chemical reaction involving sunlight, high temperatures and pollutants such as car exhaust, oil and gas vapors, and paint and hairspray fumes.

Measures that the county may be required to take to control ozone pollution include stricter controls on emissions from industrial facilities, additional planning requirements for transportation sources and vehicle emissions inspection programs.

Las Vegas is far from alone in the requirement to draft plans to control ground-level ozone. The EPA said in June that 159 million Americans -- more than half the U.S. population -- lived in "nonattainment areas."

While most of the country had to start the three-year clock for developing ozone-control plans in June, Clark County received a 90-day reprieve. Bob Folle, acting assistant Air Quality director, said the additional time came because the original nonattainment area covered the entire county.

The department successfully petitioned the EPA to allow it to designate those specific areas of the county that failed to meet the new standard. The EPA accepted that map Friday.

The urban area is included, as are portions of southern Clark County and Moapa Valley and the Apex industrial area northeast of Las Vegas.

Folle said the county has three years to develop the control plan, but five years to actually come into compliance with the new standard, technically 0.08 parts-per-million averaged over eight hours. He said the county will work to both write the control plan and achieve the new standard early.

"That's our goal -- to get these things done as quickly, as easily, as fairly and as economically as we can," Folle said.

The main impetus behind achieving the new standard is public health, he said. The county, if it failed to act, also could have faced a federal takeover of air-quality programs and ultimately the loss of critical federal funding for highways and other needs.

Federal and local officials say the move Friday will help achieve the new standard.

Deborah Jordan, director of the EPA's air division for the Pacific Southwest region, said, "This action will ultimately result in cleaner air for millions of people living in one of the fastest-growing areas of the nation."