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Letter to the editorIn a recent Advocate article titled "Coalition hopes to make case ozone less serious" the "environmentalist" for the coalition blames our ozone problems on swamp gas and thick vegetation. This is consistent with recent remarks from DEQ officials blaming the same problem on trees, Houston and odd weather patterns.The Baton Rouge pollution problems are real and the majority of the pollution comes from industry. The blame for our problems rest not on natural events, but squarely on the DEQ. In 1994 the prospect of ozone attainment by the required Nov. 15, 1999 date was very promising. Then in 1995 DEQ did two things that made ozone attainment virtually impossible. The first was taking St. James Parish out of the nonattainment area to allow for industrial expansion. The second DEQ mistake in 1995 was to get a "NOX waiver" from the EPA. DEQ used this loophole to help some industrial facilities avoid installing low NOX (nitrogen oxide) burners. Low NOX burners are a common sense approach to pollution control and are already in use by many of our industrial neighbors. However, a hard core group of industries successfully fought this advancement with the help of DEQ and industrial lobbyists. These two policy errors by DEQ assured us that we would be kicked up from Serious ozone nonattainment to Severe ozone nonattainment in November of 1999. Now the poorly named Baton Rouge Clean Air Coalition wants "to start to make plans" and they are "putting our case together". They're not doing this in an effort to make the air cleaner, but are instead working to avoid the penalties associated with having bad air quality. The coalition and DEQ hope to remove the offending ozone results from the Grosse Tete monitor and pretend the pollution went away too. There are only three areas in the South (LA, AR, MS, AL, GA, SC and FL) that have ozone problems. These are Baton Rouge, Birmingham, which is Marginal, and Atlanta. The population in the Birmingham nonattainment area is 751,000 as reported by the EPA. Atlanta (2,653,000 area population) is also in the Serious category and is going up to Severe with us in November. Baton Rouge will be unique in the Severe category because our population is so low. Of the nine areas currently in the Severe category Milwaukee (1,735,000 area population) and Sacramento (1,639,000 area population) are the smallest in population. DEQ showed little concern when the Grosse Tete monitor had three exceedences in 1995 and again in 1997. This year they consider it an emergency. DEQ has had many chances to provide for acceptable air quality in the Baton Rouge area and has refused to do it. Now we all suffer the consequences. DEQ's approach to solving our pollution problems are summed up in their most recent advice on reducing ozone, "If you must barbecue, use an electric starter instead of fluid." Sincerely Marylee Orr Executive Director, Louisiana Environmental Action Network Back to Air Projects page.
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