The Front Range has recorded multiple violations of EPA ozone standards this summer season, regional monitors show, and with temperatures poised to spike above 100 this week the metro area is well on the road to future crackdowns from federal regulators.
The Regional Air Quality Council July 7 update shows seven days of readings above the 2008-era limit of 75 parts per billion of ozone so far in the current ozone season. That starts the EPA’s clock for measuring whether the northern Front Range counties should be moved to the “extreme” violator category from the current “severe” ranking. After a few years of exceedances, Colorado is relegated by the EPA to the next category.
Each downgrade carries with it the potential for new EPA sanctions, such as the reformulated gas required at all gas stations this summer in the nonattainment area.
The same RAQC update shows 12 days shooting above the tighter 2015-era EPA limit of 70 parts per billion for toxic ozone, setting nine Front Range counties on the path to being downgraded from “moderate” to “serious” violations of that standard if the pattern continues.
Seven monitoring stations around the metro area are in violation of the 2015 ozone standard, and all the other monitors are on the verge of recording violations as temperatures heat up further this week, said Jeremy Nichols of the environmental watchdog Center for Biological Diversity.
“It’s only the first days of July and we’ve got several weeks more of the ozone season ahead of us. Definitely doesn’t look good,” Nichols said.
☀️ READ MORE
The state health department sends out ozone alerts when weather patterns show the chance of health-harming ozone in the next day or two. There were 15 alerts in June and five so far in July, Nichols said.
A special ozone alert issued for Wednesday included regions outside the northern Front Range nonattainment area, and not usually impacted by alerts, including parts of El Paso, Teller and Pueblo counties.
While RAQC officials say they recognize the high ozone levels and are working on new local government strategies to help bring them down, they also say some of this year’s spiked readings will be challenged, or “flagged.” The Front Range monitors showed high ozone readings even in April, far earlier than usual, and some of those were caused by stratospheric ozone — not human-made — being pushed by weather patterns down toward ground level, RAQC spokesperson David Sabados said.
“Several of those are likely exceptional events and would not ultimately be counted” against the limit, Sabados said.
“We had several instances of stratospheric ozone incursion that raised ground level ozone that are completely out of anyone’s control, so assuming the EPA recognizes those as exceptional events, we are doing better than some previous Junes. Of course, zero exceedances is ideal, but it’s less than it appears” on the RAQC website, Sabados said.
RAQC is including a second chart on its website this year that takes out the readings it believes the EPA will consider exceptional.
In Colorado, the state Air Quality Control Commission, Air Pollution Control Division and Energy and Carbon Management Commission have rulemaking power to enforce the Clean Air Act in ozone and other pollutants. The regional council is a research and advisory board made up of local officials.
All of them, Nichols said, are shirking responsibility for ozone violations.
“The state does everything possible to write off ozone exceedances as beyond their control, whether due to fires or stratospheric ozone intrusion,” he said. “It’s actually a bit stunning how much time and money they spend trying to knock out exceedances when there’s clearly a problem they can control. Stratospheric ozone intrusions are really rare, I don’t know all the details behind their claim, but the excuses just keep wearing thinner and thinner.”
RAQC is working with local and state governments on a number of policy changes to improve the state’s implementation plan for eventually coming into compliance with U.S. ozone caps, Sabados said. Those include:
- Crafting and passing a state law this year allowing local governments to set their own anti-idling standards that go beyond state minimums. Health officials discourage idling cars to warm them up or while doing errands, as an unproductive contributor to ozone-causing emissions.
- RAQC and others pushed through state rules requiring parks departments and other government users of lawn equipment to switch to clean electric models during high-ozone summer months. Gasoline powered mowers and blowers contribute a small but measurable — and controllable — portion of ozone emissions.
- Efforts to expand requirements for pneumatic controllers at oil and gas sites that help limit methane and volatile organic chemical leaks contributing to ozone and greenhouse gas pollution. The proposal has cleared the RAQC board, Sabados said, and will be headed to the AQCC for consideration.
- New incentives for electrifying nuisance polluters such as generators on food trucks, and to provide owners of highly polluting older cars with zero-cost repairs. Existing incentives for trading in fossil fuel lawn equipment for cleaner electric models have already proven popular.
Neighborhood groups up and down the Front Range say Colorado officials have a lot of community suspicions to overcome, after years of accumulating ozone violations.
Rick Casey of the volunteer Larimer Alliance said his group has been working to get its own continuous ozone monitoring station in northern Colorado.
“We want to understand where our ozone precursors are originating, which we strongly suspect are coming mostly from Weld County,” where much of Colorado’s oil and gas activity is concentrated, Casey said. “If we can get a continuous monitoring station installed, and begin to quantify those precursors, we feel confident we will have the scientific data to prove this.”
But a new Larimer County monitor, Casey wrote in an email, “will be of little avail if the state regulatory agencies do nothing with the data. And that will be our next political barrier to overcome, before we start to make progress on curbing our extreme ozone pollution.”