THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 4, 1995 TAG: 9501040423
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
If clean air can be compared to fine wine, 1994 was a vintage year for Hampton Roads.
For the first time since 1989, Tidewater residents breathed air that not once broke the federal health standard for ground ozone, or smog. Not for one day. Not for one hour, according to reports compiled by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
But experts and environmental officials cautioned against reading too much into the zero-violation total, saying mild weather - not any comprehensive cleanup strategy - is likely the cause.
``It just seems to be part of a natural cycle, really,'' said Frank Daniel, the department's regional director in Hampton Roads.
Daniel and others also said that this most lung-pleasing year of the '90s hardly means the region is ready to comply with the Clean Air Act. Indeed, Hampton Roads appears headed in the opposite direction.
Officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Philadelphia office said last week that Hampton Roads is about to get a notice reclassifying it as a ``moderate'' smog zone, meaning it must do more to reduce air pollution.
The new designation has been expected for months but has been inexplicably withheld. One explanation could be politics - EPA administrators have clashed with Gov. George F. Allen over clean-air mandates in Virginia.
Hampton Roads is expected to be downgraded from a ``marginal'' to ``moderate'' smog zone ``in the next few days,'' Maria Pino, an EPA engineer writing the important federal notice, said last week.
The move represents a penalty for the area's failure to purge its air of enough pollutants to meet a November 1993 deadline under the Clean Air Act.
At that time, Hampton Roads was supposed to have passed the ultimate compliance test under the law: To qualify for removal from the program, polluted areas must compile an average of not more than one smog violation per year for three consecutive years.
Hampton Roads fell short. Three violations recorded in '93 alone destroyed this delicate equation.
Pino said 42 other areas across the nation were declared ``marginal'' zones when Congress approved a toughened Clean Air Act in 1990. She said most areas passed their compliance test, leaving only a handful to be downgraded.
A reclassification would put Hampton Roads in the same smog category as Richmond, and one step behind Northern Virginia, which is considered a ``serious'' pollution zone.
These two areas are grappling with their own compliance strategies and problems, including controversial tailpipe and emissions testing, which have motorists and the governor grumbling.
Once designated as a ``moderate'' zone, Hampton Roads officials would be under a new deadline of November 1996 to devise a plan that cuts smog-producing emissions by 15 percent from sources such as cars, trucks, businesses and industry.
Anticipating their penalty, officials already are brainstorming over how to reach such a goal.
Karen Jackson Sismour, regional engineering manager for DEQ's Hampton Roads office, said major industrial plants and businesses will likely be asked to reduce emissions, although she noted how some, such as Ford Motor Co.'s plant in Norfolk, already are ``using the best technologies available.''
``So we're not sure how much we can get from these sources,'' Sismour said. ``Some of the big guys already are squeezing as much as they can.''
Whatever plan emerges would likely include vehicle-emission tests for Hampton Roads, officials agree.
``In all likelihood, we'd have to go to the testing,'' said Dwight Farmer, director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. The local board is trying to draft transportation plans that allow for growth and development yet still maintain clean air.
Farmer believes emissions testing is needed because the commission has nearly exhausted all other remedies, and because the testing would cut a large amount of pollutants - about 15 tons of hydrocarbons a year, he says.
Hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides are the two building blocks of smog. When intense sunlight is present, such as in summer, the two byproducts chemically react to form ground ozone, a proven irritant to the lungs that also has links to more serious respiratory diseases.
Technically known as volatile organic compounds, hydrocarbons generally come from fumes and emissions from gasoline, paints and solvents. Nitrogen oxides result when fossil fuels are burned. Cars, trucks and utilities are their most common sources.
There are three monitoring stations recording smog levels in Hampton Roads: in Hampton, Holland and Suffolk. Most violations are detected at the Suffolk site, where yearly highs in the region were noted in 1993, '92, '88 and '87. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
JOHN CORBITT/Staff
EXCESSIVE EMISSIONS
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB