Cut vehicle pollution or lose air quality gains, report warns

Durham-The Triangle must develop regional solutions to vehicle pollution or risk losing ground on future air quality gains, according to Clean Air for the Triangle Area: An Action Agenda, released today by the Southern Environmental Law Center. The report warns that if state and local leaders fail to develop transportation and land use plans, the Triangle will be in danger of not meeting air quality requirements in coming years, risking federal sanctions, including the loss of federal highway funds.

"The state has worked hard to clean up power plants, but that work could go up in smoke if Triangle leaders fail to aggressively attack the problem of vehicle emissions," said David Farren, air quality attorney and author of the report. "Our challenge now is to build on the success of our coordinated attack on power plant pollution to solve the problem of vehicle emissions in the Triangle."

The Triangle is ranked as the 3rd most sprawling major metro area in the nation and is consuming land at twice the rate of population growth. By 2007 three quarters of the Triangle's ozone-forming NOx emissions will be from mobile sources such as cars and trucks. Roughly a quarter of commuters in the Triangle work in a different county from where they live and the vast majority commute alone in their cars. In fact, drivers in Raleigh and Durham spent 26 hours stuck in traffic in 2002. This combination of sprawl and increased driving results in poor air quality.

As of April, 2004 the Triangle area failed to meet new federal health standards for ozone pollution, better known as smog, leading to a "nonattainment" designation by the Environmental Protection Agency. Eight counties make up this nonattainment area including Durham, Franklin, Granville, Johnston, Orange, Person, Wake and part of Chatham.

The report comes as the state is renewing its focus on air quality. This week the state's Division of Air Quality will begin its annual ozone monitoring. In addition, the American Lung Association will release its State of the Air report which is expected to show some improvements in the Triangle's air quality. Last year's report named the Triangle as one of the 25 smoggiest major metro areas in the nation.

The Triangle has fallen in and out of compliance with federal ozone standards since 1990. Preliminary state modeling suggests that the Triangle may be on track to barely meet the federal ozone standard by the 2009 deadline, but the region's ability to maintain this progress over the next 20 years is even more questionable.

"Wake County is seeing 27 acres of land developed every day - at that rate we are soon going to be like New Jersey," said Jim Goodmon, President and CEO of Capitol Broadcasting Company who wrote the foreword to the report. "We have to plan for this growth if we want to preserve our open space and curb our auto pollution. The quality of life that makes this area attractive depends on it."