Success in reducing smog pollution in several southeastern counties over the years has left only one multi-city area in Texas in violation of federal ozone rules.

But the good news may not last, especially since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to tighten the standards by the end of this year in order to protect public health and the environment.

The new standards for ozone, the main ingredient of smog, could knock almost the entire state out of compliance, depending on the level that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson chooses. During his campaign, Gov. Rick Perry touted his legal campaign against EPA air and climate rules, but environmentalists say the elections didn’t hand officials a mandate to challenge the ozone standard as well.

The EPA is reviewing the Bush-era standard for healthy ozone levels in ambient air and plans to finalize a new, tougher standard by Dec. 31. Meanwhile, the agency continues to force lagging areas across the country to comply with a standard set in 1997.

“Based on current ozone measurements, only the [Dallas-Fort Worth] area is in nonattainment for ozone,” said Terry Clawson, a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

But if EPA sets its new, health-based standard at the tighter end of the spectrum proposed, then all but two of the counties with an ozone monitor would be thrown out of compliance. The state would have to force industry to reduce pollution in order to prevent sanctions, such as losing federal highway dollars.

“As far as implementing the new ozone standards, it will be a challenge,” Clawson said.

Even without tougher standards, some Texas regions still could struggle to maintain compliance. Matthew Tejada, the executive director of Air Alliance Houston, says Houston is only attaining the standard because areas’ ozone levels can be calculated using a three-year rolling average of their data.

“In 2008 we had a real anomaly of ozone,” Tejada said. “We had an extraordinarily low ozone season.”

He predicts that next year, when the 2008 number drops out of the calculation, the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria (HGB) area will once again fail to comply unless the state reduces pollution across the board, particularly from the energy industry.

“If we really do not attack emissions from gas drilling, and we start putting hundreds of thousands of holes in east Texas, we’re going to create a nonattainment area where otherwise there would not be,” Tejada said.

The eight-county HGB area is still officially in “severe nonattainment” and faces a 2019 deadline to clean up. But the tri-county Beamont-Port Arthur area has secured attainment status, according to an Oct. 20 notice. The EPA garnered praise from local officials.

“It is an accomplishment worthy of recognition,” wrote Beaumont Mayor Becky Ames in a letter earlier this year. “We appreciate the efforts that EPA has undertaken in this redesignation proposal.”

But after a GOP landslide, a major question is how leaders should move forward on new EPA air rules.

Perry led the way for statewide Republican victories, beating challenger Democrat Bill White 55-43 percent. Attorney General incumbent Greg Abbott beat Democratic challenger Barbara Radnofsky 64-34 percent, and every other statewide GOP candidate earned at least 59 percent of the vote.

In his new book Fed Up, which Perry will promote Tuesday at a barbecue joint in San Antonio, the governor questions the EPA’s broad role.

“The federal administrative state has become so far-reaching — having departments or agencies focused on energy, the environment, health care, food, drugs, guns, labor, education, and more — that it is almost impossible to know where it ends,” he writes in the book.

A spokesman said Perry will “continue to fight the overreaching EPA in order to protect the jobs of hard-working Texans,” but did not comment on the ozone rule. Abbott didn’t respond to a request for comment at press time on the rule.

“They’ve sued on everything else, so I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Scott Deatherage, a lawyer with Patton Boggs LLP in Dallas. “We do have a lot of the chemical and petrochemical refining assets in Texas, so lower ozone levels could have an impact on those industries.”

But Radnofsky expressed doubt that Abbott would prevail in court on the EPA challenges he has already filed.

“He may not have the legal basis to win, but because he has technical standing on some of these things I think he’ll keep filing,” said Radnofsky. She added, “After many trips and many speeches and listening to people all across the state, I don’t believe that the Republican victory in Texas means that the electorate was asking for relaxed environmental standards.”

(Photo: Flickr Creative Commons/haunted by Leonard Cohen)