What's Going On?

Not much is happening as far as Denver's ozone goes and we're still scratching our head wondering why?

The Governor called on the Regional Air Quality Council earlier in late July to "immediately" develop an ozone reduction plan for next summer and beyond. So far, there's been a lot of talk about the Governor's call to action and ozone in general, but not much in the way of a clean air plan.

There's been a lot of talk about money, which understandably the state will need to follow through with the Governor's marching orders. But let's not get hung up here.

First off, there are many options available for securing the funds needed to craft an ozone reduction plan. The Regional Air Quality Council itself spends hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on voluntary programs, like Repair Your Air, that have questionable benefits on our air quality. According to the Council, around $400,000 is spent annually on Repair Your Air, a voluntary program that was reported to lead to only around a 15 ton/year reduction in volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides, key ozone forming pollutants, from tailpipes.

These pollution reductions amount to only 0.04 tons/day of ozone forming pollution, which is 0.0022% of the total daily emissions of ozone forming pollution. On average, the Regional Air Quality Council is spending over $26,000 for every ton of pollution reduced through Repair Your Air. Coal fired power plants and oil and gas companies typically spend less (sometimes far less) than $1,000 for every ton of pollution reduced.

Second, industry needs to pony up here. According to the state, several oil and gas companies have violated ozone reduction rules in the Denver metro area so far this year. These companies include Foundation Energy, Windsor Energy, Petroleum Development, Exco Resources, Petro-Canada, Petroleum Management, Red Willow, and Colton.

As part of penalizing these companies, the state should require them to help pay for future ozone planning efforts. If each of these companies paid $25,000 toward ozone planning efforts, the state would have $200,000 to work with.

We have the options, so what's going on?