Dirty Air, Dirty Money: Grandfathered Pollution Pays Dividends Downwind in Austin

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Environmental groups released an important study of Texas industrial pollution on April 27, 1998. Grandfathered Air Pollution: The Dirty Secret of Texas Industries explores the impact of the Texas Legislature's decision to "grandfather" (or exempt) industrial facilities that existed in 1971 from complying with the Clean Air Act. Thanks in no small part to this polluter loophole, Texas leads the nation most years in toxic air emissions.

The Grandfathered study analyzed 1,070 industrial plants with facilities that the Legislature has heavily or fully exempted from modern pollution-control standards. These plants emit:

• 984,000 tons per year of EPA-regulated "criteria" air pollutants, which impose human and environmental costs; and
• Clouds of smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) equivalent to the emissions spewed by 18.4 million cars (twice the number of cars licensed in Texas).

"The failure of Texas industries to [reduce grandfathered emissions to a level protective of public health] after almost three decades," the study concludes, "makes it likely that state officials will have to force the issue."

But why have Texas Legislators been paralyzed in the face of this containable problem? And why have they failed to "force the issue" for almost 30 years?

The chair of the House committee with jurisdiction over grandfathered polluters inadvertently shed light on this question recently. "I understand that environmental groups sometimes intentionally scare people so they can raise money," Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, said in a press release belittling the Grandfathered Air Pollution report². But who really excels at exploiting grandfathered air pollution to raise money—environmentalists or politicians?

Inspired by Rep. Chisum, this report follows the money trail that underlies Texas' grandfathered smog. While this trail leads to pots of gold, the real alchemists laundering dirty air into dirty money are:

• The grandfathered industries;
• Elected state officials; and
• Lobbyists.

This study traces contributions and expenditures by grandfathered interests that have benefited:

• Governor George W. Bush;
• Members of a House panel on grandfathered facilities; and
• The Texas political system as a whole.

The huge amount of money found flowing from grandfathered interests to state officials and lobbyists helps explain why Texas government has failed to close this air-polluter loophole for three decades. The chief response of state officials has been a voluntary emissions-reduction program called the Clean Air Responsibility Enterprise (CARE) program. Under this voluntary program, grandfathered polluters have pledged to reduce their total grandfathered "criteria" emissions, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses to gauge air quality. But Grandfathered Air Pollution found that the amount of voluntary reductions pledged under the CARE program amount to just 2.5 percent of all grandfathered emissions.

Putting some teeth in the program would take a real bite out of Texas smog, but Texas politicians left the teeth for grandfathered polluters in a glass on the nightstand table, opting for a symbolic program instead.

The types of air pollution spewed by grandfathered facilities contribute to an estimated 2,617 premature deaths in Texas cities each year and impose hundreds of millions of dollars in health costs, according to a 1996 Natural Resources Defense Council report, Breathtaking: Premature Mortality Due to Particulate Air Pollution.

Today, 49 percent of Texas' 19 million people live in areas with unsafe air (so-called "ozone non-attainment areas"). Another 17 percent of the population lives in areas where the air is in serious danger of flunking federal air-quality standards ("near non-attainment areas").

² "Legislator says Sierra Club report based on false information," press release, House Committee on Environmental Regulation, April 29, 1998.

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