Mirabile dictu! The Washington metropolitan region is expected to meet the federal ozone standard by the fall of 2009 — a few months earlier than required and just six years after the Environmental Protection Agency found the D.C. area in “severe non-attainment” for ozone under the 1990 Clean Air Act.
At the time, the non-attainment designation prompted the usual hand-wringing, with especially dire warnings about massive public health problems from ozone, a major ingredient in smog. The federal government threatened to withhold highway funding for any non-attainment area that did not make sufficient progress in cleaning up its air.
The rationale behind the threat was that urban areas that couldn’t meet clean air standards shouldn’t be building more roads to accommodate even more exhaust-spewing vehicles. But it gave the wrong impression that vehicles were the main problem. The creation of ozone is complicated by the way certain chemicals react to various topographical and weather conditions, and the fact that many of the pollutants were being blown here from the Midwest.
Now, as the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance points out, the Washington region’s air quality is much better than it was two decades ago, when there were far fewer people driving far fewer cars on local highways:
“In the 1980s, the Washington region averaged 17 Code Red (unhealthy air quality for all) days a year. In the 1990s, that number dropped to six per year. Since 2000, the average has been less than three per year. In 2007, despite above-average temperatures and having more residents, registered vehicles and more visitors than at any time in history, the area recorded but a single Red Çode Day between May 1 and Sept. 30, 2007.”
That’s progress.
The Metropolitan Council of Governments’ Air Quality Committee plans on reducing volatile organic compounds by 87 tons per day, and nitrous oxides by 184 tons per day by 2009. However, the majority of the reductions will come from “point sources” such as factories and power plants, and “non-road” sources. While “mobile” sources such as cars, buses and trucks do contribute to the region’s air pollution, they’re certainly not the only ones.
Despite continuing population growth, the Washington region had “less than one Code Red Day for every day over 90 degrees” for the past three years, according to MCOG’s May 23 State Implementation Plan. So much for the idea that more people — and more cars — automatically mean more air pollution.
