Wednesday, March 5, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
County commissioners are opposed to a federal proposal to monitor finer specks of dust than current guidelines require, but the air pollution control director said the new standards would actually benefit Clark County.
The county is already classified as a "serious" nonattainment area when it comes to dust floating in the air, prompting commissioners to voice their concerns Tuesday about the tighter standards being proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
No action was taken, but commissioners voiced support for a resolution by the National Association of Counties approved over the weekend that opposes lowering the particulate matter from 10 to 2.5 micrometers.
"If that happens, it could have a huge impact on this county," said Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who serves on NACo's clean air committee.
Mike Naylor, director of the county's Air Pollution Control Division, said supporting the resolution might be a good show of solidarity with brother counties, but is bad policy when it comes to Clark County's own problems.
"I wouldn't have recommended it," Naylor said. "If the EPA increases the standards, we could become a marginal or even an attainment area under the revised proposals."
Clark County has been in the serious category for dust since 1993, a distinction it shares with five other regions, including Phoenix and the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Under current standards, the county has until 2001 to reach attainment, and can apply for a five-year extension of that deadline without threatening federal funding, Naylor said.
Oddly, the proposed guidelines would hurt eastern areas of the U.S. that currently register as clean, Naylor said, but would benefit Clark County, which is classified dirty.
It has to do with the method of assessing compliance, Naylor said. Under the current method, each monitoring station is allowed one unhealthful day per year. Under the new plan, each station can have seven unhealthy days a year before being classified as nonattainment.
The county had 19 nonattainment days in 1996, seven more than posted in 1995, Naylor said.
"That latter criteria -- we can meet that," Naylor said.
Also, monitoring the finer particulate matter won't hurt Clark County because those smaller particles come from a type of soot the valley doesn't have, he said.
Naylor said 70,000 tons of dust becomes airborne each year, prompting careful scrutiny by the EPA, which has faulted the county health district for failing to put enough staff and enough money into controlling air pollution.
Naylor has already doubled the number of staff, and Commissioner Erin Kenny's clean air task force has finalized a list of recommendations to the health district.
"This is an issue we can all see, compared to carbon monoxide," Kenny said.
The county has reduced the number of days a year that carbon monoxide levels exceeded federal standards, and yet the county could be reclassified from a moderate to serious nonattainment status, Naylor said.
"That tells me our air quality is better, but as the mandates get tougher it makes it harder to comply with the standards," Commissioner Lorraine Hunt said.
Not only have county efforts reduced the overall number of bad air days a year, the amount those days exceed the federal levels is less, Naylor said.
"We have done a lot to improve the air quality as far as carbon monoxide," said Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who formed the county's first clean air task force. "But the urban haze, I don't think we made the same progress on that regardless of the standard."
archive
