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Friday
March 19, 2010 Since 1922 |
The politics of pollution
By Luke Hales
The plan, endorsed by the Greater Houston Partnership, was designed to curtail White’s plan to regulate local polluters, with the hope that a standoff between government and industry could be averted. During a meeting with area administrators, including Baytown’s Mayor Stephen DonCarlos, White repeated a Reagan cliché, saying the administration would “trust but verify” industry efforts. This seems to suggest that the plan is less a voluntary action and more an indirect, backdoor method for White to monitor area polluters, the issue that set the voluntary plan into effect to begin with. While Mayor White is to be commended for meeting with area leaders on the air quality front, it does not change White’s impetus behind the session. He is seeking a way to perform the duties that state and national agencies currently manage without approval or the abject need for his office to do so.
Unfortunately, a voluntary effort is substantially less likely to generate satisfactory results than a legislative one. Voluntary laws do not work; without a penalty for law-breaking, it is merely a suggestion. More importantly, when government regulates industry, resistance is inevitable, a fact proven through anti-trust and product safety laws throughout the last century. In most cases, the polluters monitor their own emissions as required by law. Even with federal restrictions and oversight, the issue of air quality and control is complex, and cannot be remedied by a simple stroke of the pen.
This is not the first time that administrators have demanded a standard of air quality, and certainly not the first time an arbitrary deadline has not been met. Twenty years ago, Houston officials informed the Environmental Protection Agency that despite completing all requirements put forth by the agency to reduce ozone levels, the city would be unable to meet the federally mandated standard. “We have done everything the EPA told us to do, but we are not going to get there, not this year, not next year,” Dallas Evans, chief of the Houston Air Quality Control Bureau in 1987, said regarding the ozone mandate deadline. This comment is parroted by current task force chairman Dan Wolterman, who stated that a six-month deadline was less likely to be met than a deadline of a year. It appears that when some elected officials get involved with affairs of commerce, there is a preternatural drive to fix problems at all cost, with little attention given to the actual necessary requirements for making the solution a reality.
Perhaps most alarming is White’s statement that should little progress be seen within his deadline, he may take away the voluntary aspect of the plan, making his ruling mandatory. One is forced to wonder exactly how this would happen without the approval of the governing bodies that establish the acceptable levels of air toxins. It takes on the value of an empty threat, unless laws are passed to change these acceptable levels, in which case his judgment would matter little in the wake of legislative reform.
Rome, of course, was not built in a day, mostly because it was a government project. Progress of any nature takes time, and while much advancement has been made in air quality, we are still far from the mark. The major sources of pollution are unlikely to make changes in their methods unless they are given stricter requirements by their government.
Editorial written by Luke Hales, city editor of The Baytown Sun, on behalf of the newspaper’s editorial board.
The plan, endorsed by the Greater Houston Partnership, was designed to curtail White’s plan to regulate local polluters, with the hope that a standoff between government and industry could be averted. During a meeting with area administrators, including Baytown’s Mayor Stephen DonCarlos, White repeated a Reagan cliché, saying the administration would “trust but verify” industry efforts. This seems to suggest that the plan is less a voluntary action and more an indirect, backdoor method for White to monitor area polluters, the issue that set the voluntary plan into effect to begin with. While Mayor White is to be commended for meeting with area leaders on the air quality front, it does not change White’s impetus behind the session. He is seeking a way to perform the duties that state and national agencies currently manage without approval or the abject need for his office to do so.
Unfortunately, a voluntary effort is substantially less likely to generate satisfactory results than a legislative one. Voluntary laws do not work; without a penalty for law-breaking, it is merely a suggestion. More importantly, when government regulates industry, resistance is inevitable, a fact proven through anti-trust and product safety laws throughout the last century. In most cases, the polluters monitor their own emissions as required by law. Even with federal restrictions and oversight, the issue of air quality and control is complex, and cannot be remedied by a simple stroke of the pen.
This is not the first time that administrators have demanded a standard of air quality, and certainly not the first time an arbitrary deadline has not been met. Twenty years ago, Houston officials informed the Environmental Protection Agency that despite completing all requirements put forth by the agency to reduce ozone levels, the city would be unable to meet the federally mandated standard. “We have done everything the EPA told us to do, but we are not going to get there, not this year, not next year,” Dallas Evans, chief of the Houston Air Quality Control Bureau in 1987, said regarding the ozone mandate deadline. This comment is parroted by current task force chairman Dan Wolterman, who stated that a six-month deadline was less likely to be met than a deadline of a year. It appears that when some elected officials get involved with affairs of commerce, there is a preternatural drive to fix problems at all cost, with little attention given to the actual necessary requirements for making the solution a reality.
Perhaps most alarming is White’s statement that should little progress be seen within his deadline, he may take away the voluntary aspect of the plan, making his ruling mandatory. One is forced to wonder exactly how this would happen without the approval of the governing bodies that establish the acceptable levels of air toxins. It takes on the value of an empty threat, unless laws are passed to change these acceptable levels, in which case his judgment would matter little in the wake of legislative reform.
Rome, of course, was not built in a day, mostly because it was a government project. Progress of any nature takes time, and while much advancement has been made in air quality, we are still far from the mark. The major sources of pollution are unlikely to make changes in their methods unless they are given stricter requirements by their government.
Editorial written by Luke Hales, city editor of The Baytown Sun, on behalf of the newspaper’s editorial board.