Some Capitol region government officials said a report released Thursday that gave failing grades to the area’s air quality used older data and did not mention an array of initiatives undertaken in the region and beyond to help clear the air.
“It doesn’t give the Washington region enough credit,” said Joan Rohlfs, chief of air quality planning at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. “They put things in black-and-white terms.”
The American Lung Association’s “State of the Air: 2006” report ranked the Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia-West Virginia region as the 12th most polluted by ozone and fine particles in the country.
Rohlfs and Stanley Tracey, acting program manager for the District of Columbia’s Air Quality Division, said the report used data from 2002-04. Those numbers didn’t include 2005 advances made by both regional initiatives and Environmental Protection Agency regulations placed on Midwestern power plants that helped cut the transportation of pollution into the region. Rohlfs said 2005 was the first year the region went without a code red day for ozone. Rohlfs said she didn’t expect the association’s report to highlight regional partnerships and programs to improve air quality, but the report’s wake-up call to the public could help groups working toward cleaner air. “In the long run, they’ve probably done us a favor because we haven’t been able to get people’s attention,” Rohlfs said.
