Atlanta won’t meet 2007 air quality deadline

Because of continued poor air quality that threatens public health, Atlanta will not meet a 2007 federal deadline to achieve healthy levels of ozone and must be downgraded to a more serious “nonattainment” designation by EPA. The new “moderate nonattainment” designation will require the Atlanta metro area to implement additional measures to improve air quality by a 2010 deadline. Without taking these steps immediately, Atlanta will miss that deadline, and will also risk the loss of federal highway money, as occurred in the late 1990s.

“Atlanta cannot wait for EPA to tell us what we already know. The region will only meet fast-approaching future deadlines if we put the necessary improvements in place now. Addressing our air quality problems now will not only help us avoid federal sanctions like the loss of highway construction funds, but it will help millions of Georgians breathe healthier air sooner,” said Jim Grode, air quality attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Although EPA does not have to officially declare Atlanta in “moderate nonattainment” of the federal ozone standard until 2008, the air quality readings from this summer make it mathematically impossible for Atlanta to meet its clean air requirements by the 2007 deadline. If Atlanta waits two more years to develop the necessary air quality improvement plans and further delays implementation until EPA approves those plans a year after that, it will be too late to implement strategies to improve the region’s air quality before the 2010 deadline.

Cool, wet weather helped the region comply with an older, less protective “one-hour ozone standard” in 2005. However, despite the favorable weather, the region nonetheless failed to comply with the stricter “eight-hour ozone standard” implemented by EPA to more adequately protect public health. The hot, dry summer of 2006 has led Atlanta to increased violations of the eight-hour standard, and even would have resulted in violation of the one-hour standard it met in 2005. By July of this year, eight of the region’s eleven monitors had registered readings high enough to violate the eight-hour ozone standard. Under the Clean Air Act, if any one of the Atlanta-area air quality monitors records excessive levels of ozone the entire Atlanta region is designated as a nonattainment area.

“These violations are a clear sign that more needs to be done to clean Atlanta’s air and that we can’t rely on the weather to keep our air healthy enough to breathe,” said Grode. “Atlanta residents have been waiting over twenty years for comprehensive, long-lasting solutions to our air problem. It’s time that our state’s leaders gave them to us.”