A Times Editorial

We need a strategy for cleaner air

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 9, 2000

It comes as no surprise that Pinellas and Hillsborough counties would flunk federal clean-air standards. State lawmakers and Gov. Jeb Bush have made things even worse. Rather than fight the pollutant ozone with all reasonable means, the state cut a sweetheart deal with a chief polluter, Tampa Electric Co., and halted the testing of auto emissions.

The latest dodge came from his environmental secretary, David Struhs, who wants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ignore reports of high ozone levels in the Tampa Bay region. Struhs maintained, despite high pollution readings, that "the Tampa Bay area has not had a recurring ozone problem over the past decade." He blamed the readings that exceeded federal standards on wildfires in Central America, as if polluted air already here doesn't exacerbate the problem.

Bush and the Legislature are in denial about the Tampa Bay region's ozone problem. That includes local lawmakers who pandered to the crowd by voting to end emissions tests. The best course would have been to begin screening for nitrogen oxide, or NOx, rather than dismantling the testing program altogether. Now the state has few options left.

Struhs seems content waiting for new technology to reduce automobile and industrial emissions over time. But a passive approach ceding control to the market is a surrender of regulatory responsibility. Imposing new clean-air controls on industrial polluters would help, assuming a retrofit takes place within a reasonable time and factories are barred from selling their pollution credits. But any approach must target the harmful practices of motorists and ordinary household polluters to be effective over the longterm.

It seems inevitable that any new pollution-control restrictions will be more onerous on consumers than the much-despised annual tailpipe test. Poorly tuned vehicles account for up to half of the smog-causing pollution in the urban areas, and halting the tests without an alternative in place invites the EPA to punish Florida with sanctions, including the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal highway funds.

Struhs needs to unveil his Plan B. How will Florida avoid sanctions should the EPA refuse to give the state more latitude on its pollution levels or refuse to wait another year for ozone to drop? How will the state achieve reductions in ozone without unfairly punishing new businesses for practices by others in the past and do it while accommodating population growth? And beyond the minimum needed to satisfy the EPA, how will the Bush administration clean the region's air -- not in four or five years, but now -- so that citizens, especially children and the elderly, suffer fewer health risks from the irritation of ozone?

The political mob that ended emissions testing didn't answer these questions. Now the governor must clear the air or the EPA will.

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