Posted on 06/09/2011 3:46:29 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
On the heels of a scathing critique by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt on Wednesday, President Obama faced pressure from a burgeoning environmental justice coalition demanding stronger action on ozone, a component of smog, in predominantly Latino communities.
Fourteen groups sent a letter to Obama expressing dismay at missed opportunities and delays in bringing permissible ozone levels down to between 60 and 70 parts per billion:
The EPA estimates that the strongest standard of 60 parts per billion would avoid as many as 12,000 deaths and 58,000 asthma attacks per year. Implementing a weaker standard would mean more lives lost and more asthma attacks –- costs that Latinos would disproportionately bear.
The Latino community has faced many challenges over the past few years. We’ve seen missed opportunities, delays and more. With lives at stake, we hope that we won’t see yet another burden if polluting industries succeed in blocking EPA’s efforts to protect us from smog.
This is a chance to fix a costly mistake by the Bush administration, which in 2008 disregarded science and set smog standards too high to adequately protect public health. This issue is too important to have mistakes like this repeated.
EPA announced proposed ozone standards of 60-70 ppb in January 2010, but delayed implementing them and in December, said it would submit the issue to a scientific advisory panel. That panel since has endorsed the lower limits. The agency is slated to establish new standards in July.
The George W. Bush administration had lowered the limit from 85 to 75 ppb. No urban area of California meets even the 1997 federal standard of 80 ppb. If states fail to meet federal standards, the government can withhold highway funding.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
ROTF!
I’m sure ozone levels are high on the list of concerns of Latino neighborhoods.
This horsesh!t almost writes itself, doesn' it?
Increase the ozone levels to a billion parts per billion!
Maybe they should start with some of the smoke spewing beaters I see being driven in some of those communities. Oh, wait, that’s probably racist.
I wonder if methane increases ozone levels. Better back off on those chalupas and burritos Pedro!
It's scary that a good percentage actually falls for this crap via proper education (indoctrination) and droning attitude.
OMG...I thought this was SATIRE...
welll, it is the LA Times. ;-)
strange times, huh.
Sounds like a load of BS to me. I’m thinking that jobs and immigration are far more a greater priority.
LOL and WTF?!?!?!? Smog in L.A., Latinos Hit Hardest. Does the goverment secretly issue whites and blacks special gas masks and denies them to Latinos?????
Maybe the air is nicer back in Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica etc.
If the rural counties are not able to stay below EPA edicts how can anyplace else do it?
And guess what is going to happen when it goes to 0.06?
Fines and penalties to rural counties hat have no significant level of manufacturing, shutting down power plants that are the only sources of power in the region, collapsing local economies, closing farming and cattle operations.
The researchers then turned to the silage (feed) itself. They sequentially tested each of seven different types of feed in a one-meter-square tented chamber. Into this mobile cube they infused a mix of gases that matched the background composition of the air in California's San Joaquin Valley. When they illuminated the chamber's interior with lamps to simulate sunlight's ultraviolet rays, the silage cooked up a lot of additional ozone even during a short six minute test. Corn silage generated about 125 ppb ozone; alfalfa silage a little less; and, mixed oat-wheat silage, a significant 210 ppb. Alcohols and aldehydes in silages have thus emerged as leading contributors to regional ozone formation.
The ozone-formation potency of silage pales in comparison to that of tailpipe emissions from a gasoline-powered car. However, the researchers calculated that the San Joaquin Valley has so much silage that animal feed would appear to be the single biggest driver of the region's smog-ozone problem. Whereas cars and light-duty trucks can generate some 13 metric tons of ozone per day in the Valley, the researchers found that feed for the Valley's 10 million head of dairy cattle can produce another 24.5 tons of ozone per day (with corn silage accounting for all but about 8 percent of the feed's share). The cattle themselves, through burps or emissions from waste, add only about 3 tons to the Valley's ozone per day.
http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/environmental-climatechangelaw/blogs/environmentallawandclimatechangeblog/archive/2010/05/31/cattle-feed-can-contribute-to-increased-rural-ozone-levels.aspx
Here is what is currently in violation of 0.075 limit.
And they want to go to 0.060?
.
heck, the midwest is virgin air according to that.. what about all the diesel tractors and rigs..? and livestock,, millions of ‘em..? crazy times..
Hmmm, I’m looking at that little blue spot in northern Nevada. That is Washoe County. That strip is a couple of hundred of miles long. At the very southern part is the city of Reno. Also within that couple of hundred mile strip are the towns of Empire and Gerlach (Both with a population of 300...well Empire now has about zero as it was a exclusively a company town, and the plant has closed this year). With another town of Suttcliffe (at pyramid lake..another 300), there are no other towns in all of Washoe County. In fact other than a few towns along I-80 on the way to Winnemucca, there are no other towns (or even roads...other than I-80, there is only 1 paved road) in the entire 20,000 square mile NW corner of Nevada. I have 4 wheeled tons and tons across this country, and with the exception of very scattered very small ranches there is nobody at all. So how again is Washoe County an Ozone hot spot?
Well, the city of Reno itself kind of is, only in winter. It is at the bottom of a valley, and in winter temperature inversions are frequent...so cold air sinks to the valley floor, and stays stagnant for days at a time, while car exhaust and especially wood smoke just collects more and more. In the summer, wind is constant, so this is not a problem. The only time in the summer we have horrible air quality problems is when California dumps millions of acres worth smoke and CO2 from burning trees into our atmosphere because of their eco-nut green misapplication of forestry practices...I wish we could sue California for utterly wrecking our quality of life in the summer (you can’t even see the mountains during their stupid fires), but also dumping 100 times the entire quantity of CO2 into the air than Nevada generates in a decade during every fire. (Not that I believe in CO2...but they do)
Huh. So Bush "disregarded science" by lowering the limit but Clinton's higher limit? No criticism. CA failing to meet even '97 standards? Not their fault. Bush's fault!
Ping!
One thing that would help is to enforce our immigration laws. Also, the fastest growing group is Latino. Maybe they should point a finger at themselves.
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