Prepared in Cooperation with the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission
ETCOG Main Page ETCOG EnvRes Home
Prepared in Cooperation with the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission
ETCOG Main Page ETCOG EnvRes Home
In 1996, the Tyler-Longview-Marshall area faced possible environmental sanctions because of periodic high levels of ozone during the summer of 1995. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considered declaring the five counties (Gregg, Harrison, Rusk, Smith, and Upshur) a non-attainment area, meaning the region is in violation of federal clean air standards. Remedies imposed by the EPA would have severely curbed industrial expansion and job growth. ETCOG staff, the Northeast Texas Air Care (NETAC) Group and the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) worked together to avoid this designation by developing a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for establishing a Flexible Attainment Region (FAR) for the five-county region. The FAR was officially approved by the EPA in September, 1996. The FAR describes in detail the voluntary actions that industry, utilities, and local governments will take to improve air quality in East Texas.
In FY 1996-97, ETCOG received a $176,666 Near Non-Attainment Planning Grant from TNRCC to conduct an air quality study for our region. The purpose of this study is to determine what is causing high concentrations of ground level ozone within the Tyler-Longview-Marshall area and to identify planning activities and actions that can be taken by local governments and industries to maintain compliance with National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone. This study, which was conducted by the University of Texas at Austin and Pollution Solutions, provided an emissions inventory and air monitoring information and analysis for our region.
TNRCC provided $283,750 in grant funds during FY 1998-99 to further expand on the research that was completed FY 1996-97. These funds are being used to undertake additional emissions inventory and air monitoring work and to engage in both urban scale and regional scale modeling of the Tyler-Longview-Marshall Near Non-Attainment area. This work is being conducted by ENVIRON International Corp. which was selected as ETCOG's primary air quality consultant during the required RFP selection process. The University of Texas at Austin and Pollution Solutions serve as subcontractors to ENVIRON.
An additional $200,000 in grant funds were also allocated to ETCOG in March 1999, which will allow for an extra monitoring site and for further extension of the proposed regional scale modeling for our area. It is also anticipated that ETCOG will receive an estimated $833,000 in TNRCC funds during FY 2000-01 for continued modeling, analysis, and research. These regional air quality studies serve as fundamental components in the FAR agreements between East Texas and the EPA.