U.S. widens efforts to banish smog

WASHINGTON — The air in hundreds of U.S. counties is simply too dirty to breathe, the government said Wednesday, ordering a multibillion-dollar expansion of efforts to clean up smog in cities and towns nationwide.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it was tightening the amount of ozone, commonly known as smog, that will be allowed in the air. But the new standard still falls short of what most health experts say is needed to significantly reduce heart and asthma attacks from breathing smog-clogged air.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson called the new limits "the most stringent standards ever," and he said they will require 345 counties — out of more than 700 that are monitored — to make air-quality improvements because they now have dirtier air than is healthy to breathe.

Johnson also said he would push Congress to rewrite the nearly 37-year-old Clean Air Act to let regulators consider the cost and feasibility of controlling pollution when making decisions about air quality, something that is currently prohibited by the law.

Johnson said state and local officials have considerable time to meet the new requirements — as much as 20 years for some that have the most serious pollution problems.

The new standard would put the Seattle area near the edge of having too-high ozone levels. That could mean a repeat of the 1970s and 1980s, when parts of Snohomish, King and Pierce counties were declared out of compliance.

Ozone levels here have since fallen below the old EPA threshold, because of new federal standards for clean fuel and tailpipe emissions, as well as local measures requiring gas stations and other fuel distributors to install equipment capturing gas fumes, said Dave Kircher, manager of the air-resources department for the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. The agency is in charge of enforcing federal air standards in those counties.

"If we have high ozone levels this summer, we could be nonattainment," Kircher said.

About 85 counties nationwide fall short of the old standard enacted a decade ago.

Some of those chronic polluters are far above the old limit, such as a large swatch of Southern California and a long stretch from Washington, D.C., up to New England.

Johnson's decision met sharp criticism from health experts, and some members of Congress accused the EPA chief of ignoring the science. The new standard conflicts with the advice of two of the agency's scientific advisory panels, one on air quality and the other on protection of children.

The new EPA standard will lower the allowable concentration of ozone in the air to no more than 75 parts per billion, compared with the old standard of 80.

The science boards had told the agency that limits of 60 to 70 parts per billion are needed to protect the nation's most vulnerable citizens, especially children, the elderly and people suffering from asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

Rogene Henderson, who chairs the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, said in an interview that she disagreed with Johnson's decision even as she welcomed a tighter standard.

"We can't kid ourselves that this is as health-protective as we would like, but this is a step in the right direction," Henderson said.

Information from Seattle Times reporter Warren Cornwall and The Washington Post is included in this report.