ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—New Mexico air quality officials said Thursday the northwestern corner of the state—home to one of the nation’s largest natural gas fields and two coal-fired power plants—isn’t meeting the federal government’s new standard for ozone pollution.
Neither is Sunland Park, a rural area in the southern part of the state that sits near a major international population center that includes El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
The New Mexico Air Quality Bureau is recommending that San Juan County and part of Rio Arriba County in the north and a portion of Dona Ana County in the south be classified as nonattainment areas because ozone levels there have surpassed the standard.
All states must turn in their recommendations next month to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which will decide which areas need to reduce their ozone levels.
Ground-level ozone, the primary component of smog, forms when sunlight mixes with emissions from vehicles, industry and other pollution sources. The colorless gas can irritate the respiratory system, reduce lung capacity and aggravate asthma.
Mary Uhl, director of the Air Quality Bureau, said federal regulators will have a difficult task.
“I think EPA will be faced with a lot more nonattainment areas than it’s used to facing for ozone and a lot more areas that are not the traditional nonattainment areas,” she said, pointing to rural places in New Mexico and Wyoming that have seen levels as high as some major metropolitan areas.
The EPA last March lowered the health standard for ozone from its previous level of 0.08 parts per million to 0.075 ppm.
Agency officials have estimated that 345 counties will not be able to meet the standard and implementing it nationwide will cost around $8 billion per year by 2020.
New Mexico’s draft recommendations imply that the high ozone levels in the northwest and southern parts of the state are part of a regional problem.
In the Four Corners, for example, oil and gas operations extend across the state line into southwestern Colorado and the potential for future energy development throughout the San Juan Basin remain high.
Uhl said other sources of ozone pollution include vehicle tailpipes, coal-fired power plants and industry in general.
“How far sources in that area are actually contributing to issues at our monitor in San Juan County, that’s going to be an interesting question for the EPA to decide,” Uhl said. “It’s certainly our position that probably there are sources in the region that are not under New Mexico’s jurisdiction that will affect the nonattainment area.”
Colorado’s recommendations say the southwestern part of that state meets the federal standard and that most of the oil and gas development is south of the state line. It also says many natural gas support facilities and two coal-fired power plants are on New Mexico’s side of the border.
Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy director for the environmental group WildEarth Guardians, accused Colorado of thumbing its nose at New Mexico.
“States are starting to realize the interstate nature of this problem. You would think they’d want to try to work together on this,” he said. “… This is the basin that we need to be focusing on and to cut off that northern chunk, it’s going to put New Mexico in a bind.”
Paul Tourangeau, director of Colorado’s Air Pollution Control Division, said Colorado has worked with New Mexico in establishing the Four Corners Air Quality Task Force to evaluate the region’s air quality issues and come up with strategies to reduce emissions.
He also said Colorado has adopted numerous policies to reduce emissions from oil and gas activities and other sources on its side of the border.
Uhl said once the EPA designates those areas that fail to meet the standard, states will have until 2013 to come up with a plan to reach attainment and that could have far reaching consequences for some areas.
“That’s the problem with nonattainment. Not only does it affect public health, it can also affect the economics of a region,” she said. “That’s why we want to bring the areas back into attainment to protect the public health but also to protect the economic interests.”
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New Mexico Air Quality Bureau:
Colorado Air Pollution Control Division:
Environmental Protection Agency:
