Business groups, however, say there has been considerable progress since the hazy days of the 1980s. In a report issued earlier this year, the Foundation for Clean Air Progress, an industry-sponsored group, said an analysis of high levels of ozone pollution shows that it declined 43 percent in every city with an ozone problem.
"We have made tremendous progress," said Bill Buff, a group spokesman. For example, he points out that in 1980 Los Angeles exceeded the federal limit on ozone concentrations 156 times. But by 1999, it exceeded federal standards only six times.
O'Donnell agrees there has been progress, but he said the business group's figures are overstated because they are based on pre-1997 health standards, which the EPA says no longer represent the levels whereby ozone causes health problems.
Both groups agree there is still plenty of work left to do. If this is a hot summer—and it has started that way—ozone levels will be pushed to unhealthy levels.
A chief battleground in the fight against dirty air will be California. Even though Governor Davis has eased the strictures on gas-fired plants, he remains under pressure from business interests to allow diesel generators to run any time this summer so firms can avoid shutting down during blackouts.
"While small and scattered, the proliferation [of diesel generators] could significantly add to air pollution in California this summer," said Matt Petersen, executive director of Global Green, the U.S. chapter of Green Cross International.
Still, the smog created by the diesels could be offset somewhat by the retrofitting of utilities with pollution-control technology, which has already cleaned up some of California's big "boiler" power plants.
The improvements have made them 90 percent cleaner, said Mike Schieble, deputy executive officer of the California Air Resources Board.
"We actually think that on really hot days, when everything is up and running, we'll see a little less pollution this summer compared to last summer," he said.
Until recently, some of the power plants in the state were limited in the number of hours they could operate. The goal is to help keep particulate levels down.
Davis, however, recently signed an executive order that allows the state's power plants to run when needed. The state will charge operators a pollution fee, which they will fold into the prices they charge. "If we said, 'No, you've reached your limits and can't operate any more,' we would face more blackouts. And that's not a proposition anyone wants to face," said Schieble.
California environmental groups want the surplus fees paid by the utilities to be used specifically for pollution reduction.
"There is no solid plan as to how that is going to happen yet," said Sheryl Carter, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
While L.A.'s air problems are bad, Houston is becoming the latest poster child for pollution. For the second year in a row, Houston overtook Los Angeles in the number of days it exceeded federal ozone standards—44 compared with 40 in Los Angeles.
"The air is a very busy place during the summer. Something like 50 to 100 different chemical reactions are going on simultaneously. The most famous of those products is ozone," said Gene McMullen, an official with Houston's Bureau of Air Quality Control.
That has caused a lot of panic and hand-wringing, especially after a second year showed Houston's new ranking at the top of the smog chart was no aberration. Consequently, Texas officials rushed to finish an air-quality implementation plan.
That proposal, soon to be submitted to the EPA, is essential to keeping federal highway dollars flowing to the state. "The hope is we'll be in compliance with ozone by 2007," said Rob Barrett, assistant director of Harris County Pollution Control, which includes Houston.
Some southern states are also scrambling to meet higher standards. Long blamed for pollution problems as far away as Boston, the South's coal-fired power plants are ratcheting up operations.
A broad population shift toward the Mason-Dixon line has caused the generators to run at full capacity, while car exhaust increasingly envelops work commuting around cities such as Richmond, Virginia, and Athens, Georgia.
The latest Lung Association report shows five new Southern communities joining America's top 25 ozone-polluted cities. These include Richmond-Petersburg, Virginia; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point, North Carolina; and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Progress in Dixie
In an indication that these warning signs are beginning to register, three Dixie governors—from North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee—recently signed a clean-air pact. Although non-binding, the accord says "each state must do its part to protect and improve air quality."
The regional approach is essential since air pollution doesn't know state borders. In fact, many southern states complain that a lot of their air pollution is generated by coal-fired Tennessee Valley Authority plants. TVA is now spending U.S. $1 billion to reduce its own emissions.
The governors' recent summit coincides with proposed legislation in North Carolina that would earmark U.S. $2.2 billion to clean-up five Tarheel smokestacks that emit the heaviest load of sulfur, nitrogen oxide, and mercury. In addition, the bill, which aims to cut pollution by 70 percent year-round, would also eliminate an EPA rule that allows energy firms to buy "pollution credits" from other companies that have already cleaned-up.
"The North Carolina smokestacks legislation is looking at taking real and substantive steps to reduce pollution," said Brownie Newman of the Western North Carolina Alliance in Asheville, North Carolina. "We may be the first Southern state to clean up our power plants, but we won't be the last."
(c) 2001 The Christian Science Monitor
