Perhaps several days of fighting off flash-floods and ducking near-dawn tornado warnings will put Mecklenburg County leaders in the right frame of mind to discuss air quality issues. The county’s Air Quality Commission will tonight recommend a host of command-and-control measures to the county commission. Their aim, to reduce the region’s ozone levels, but can such mandates do nothing about a major ozone factor: the weather.
Charlotte is just coming off its coolest August in 115 years. Accordingly, the lack of hot days has produced very few high ozone days this summer. How few? Try just a single “code red” reading from a single Charlotte-area monitoring station compared to 480 “code green” readings. In 2003 there were five such “code red” ozone readings, 17 in 2002, and two in 2001. That’s not a trend, it’s a Carowinds ride.
Radical changes in ozone levels year-to-year in the Charlotte region should be expected as, this just in, Charlotte is not in California. Many smog-ridden California cities in close proximity to both strong Pacific winds and foothills are perfectly situated for the formation of inversion layers which can trap ozone over cities. Such events are not unheard of for Charlotte during the summer, but other ozone-dispersing weather patterns are also at play as recent weeks have shown.
However, such real world data is immaterial as the Environmental Protection Agency has declared the region to out of attainment for ozone, prompting local officials to scramble to do something in the name of ozone abatement lest federal transportation dollars get cut off as a result. Time for a deep breath.
Such flailing about is futile for in addition to the fickle weather, baseline reductions in ozone and other pollutants is already doing the heavy work of cleaning the air. Cars are cleaner than ever before and so is the air, despite the impression conveyed by the EPA’s tighter ozone standard handed down in April.
Closing down drive-thru windows or telling employers to make employees ride the bus to work, ideas the Air Quality Commission has floated, simply will not dent regional ozone levels on some August dog day in 2007. In fact, in contemplating reaching all the way down to businesses with just 20 employees for anti-ozone measures betrays a dirty little secret about Charlotte’s quest for cleaner air. There are just no big easy targets out there and very few high concentrations of polluters or even employees to go after. This is yet another example of how wonderfully decentralized, diverse, and low density Charlotte continues to be. Top-down solutions meant for high-density cities with chronic ozone issues just make no sense for Charlotte.
This suggests that by far the biggest bang for the buck would be an intense effort to get gross polluting vehicles off the roads. Everyone sees them. They are the ones that belch blue smoke like an old riding mower and are usually about as road-worthy. County officials should explore an ordinance which would allow the ticketing of such vehicles, perhaps even their impoundment if rapidly accelerating the clean air trend is the goal of local officials.
Either that or jump on the weather machine bandwagon before it is too late.