I have lived in S. Texas since 1973, and moved to and from Los Angeles four times since 1988. Our air is so clear here, you can see all the way across Houston down Hwy 59 when it is not a cloudy rainy day. In Los Angeles we often couldn’t see the house across the street, due to the smog. Yet WE are the ones always being penalized.
I went on a roadtrip out West in 2005. In the Texas panhandle and Amarillo on I-40, no smog that I can remember. On the other hand, on I-15 in the Inland Empire, it was like running into a brown wall.
Same here in Corpus. We have many refineries but all the wind from the coast cleans out the air. As a result Corpus has some of the cleanest air in the South.