Texans don’t always associate clean air with major urban areas, and for good reason. The heavy industrial activity, electric power plants, and vehicular traffic in big cities all combine to create ground level ozone, commonly known as smog. Increased ozone and smog has known negative impacts on human health, including causing asthma attacks and other respiratory problems. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates ozone and sets guidelines for when a city is in compliance with air quality standards. Currently, San Antonio is technically in compliance with EPA ozone standards, but only by a quirk in how the agency’s compliance timelines work. A closer look actually shows the city has the second worse air quality of any urban area in Texas – second only to Dallas/Fort Worth.
The correlation between ozone and public health has spurred EPA to revise and strengthen its national ozone standards. If San Antonio continues with business as usual, it’s clear local air quality and public health will continue to suffer, and San Antonio will be officially designated as non-compliant with EPA standards.
Any large city has a number of challenges, but San Antonio’s leadership is faced with the particularly difficult task of cleaning up the region’s worsening air quality. Why the “region?” While there are certainly many actions the city needs to take to reduce pollution generated within San Antonio, pollution is also being transported by air from nearby areas. For example, experts from the University of Texas and the Alamo Area Council of Governments were able to show that oil and gas operators in the Eagle Ford Shale region contribute to San Antonio smog.
This poses both a challenge and an opportunity for San Antonio’s political leadership. Prior to the election, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), along with several other environmentally focused groups, hosted a Q&A with the mayoral candidates. One of the topics covered was the city’s ozone problem and emissions from the Eagle Ford region.
When Mayor Ivy Taylor was asked what leadership role she would take to ensure the regional stakeholders, including the oil and gas industry, come to the table and do their fair share to improve air quality that impacts San Antonio, she answered:
“… I think it would be my job as mayor, and I take this responsibility seriously, to convene all of these folks and to ensure that we in San Antonio are part of a regional discussion. I have noted that I believe that’s an area where we can improve our city government and we need to invest resources in having staff that are in consistent communication with some of these other areas that are nearby. So I would like to advocate for that. But then be a key voice and a key player at the table as well and try to figure out if there is a way that we can balance if there’s anything that we can do to provide a framework that would reduce and minimize those impacts while we still continue to enjoy the benefits of all that economic activity.”
Mayor Taylor deserves our congratulations on her election as San Antonio’s mayor, and also our support in working toward fulfilling her campaign promises. It’s also promising to see other political leaders in San Antonio engaging on air quality issues, including councilmembers Ron Nirenberg (D8) and Ray Lopez (D6), who have called for greater action to improve the city’s air quality. EDF looks forward to working with the city’s leadership, the public, and key stakeholders to create a framework for solving what is a problem not just for San Antonio, but the entire region.
This story has be republished with permission from the Environmental Defense Funds’ EDF Voices blog.
*Featured/top image: Downtown San Antonio on a particularly smoggy day. Technically “smog” is ground level ozone. Photo courtesy of SA Clean Technology Forum.
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Can we get some more reference links in the first paragraph regarding the “second worse air quality in Texas” Thanks for the article keep up the reporting on this topic.
Although you shouldn’t take any one day as a snapshot of the city’s problems, there are numerous tools to check air quality reports yourself. One is at the TCEQ website, TCEQ.texas.gov . You can obtain access to others, which provide real-time access to monitors, by googling. There have been days in the past two months when, according to these monitors, San Antonio registered as the third or fourth worst air quality in the U.S., and one memorable day when it ranked in the top four in the continent. This should be considered a public health emergency. Recent studies show sharp cognition declines as a result of relatively short exposures to particulate matter–look for air pollution and the aging brain on the web, if you’re so inclined. As dangerous as particulate matter is for developing lungs and those with respiratory illness, it’s a neurological time bomb with a short fuse. San Antonio can either deal with this now—or it can face a public health debacle.
Glad this is being brought up… “But then be a key voice and a key player at the table as well and try to figure out if there is a way that we can balance if there’s anything that we can do to provide a framework that would reduce and minimize those impacts while we still continue to enjoy the benefits of all that economic activity.” – My hope is that the discussion can also conclude that if there is not a way to continue enjoying the benefits of all that economic activity without the smog then we choose a healthy environment over financial wealth.