TCEQ Houston Area Eight-Hour Ozone SIP Meetings
Beveridge & Diamond, P.C. - Texas Environmental Update, April 2008
On March 25 and 26, 2008, TCEQ held Houston-Galveston-Brazoria (“HGB”) eight-hour ozone state implementation plan (“SIP”) stakeholder meetings in Houston. At the meetings, TCEQ provided an overview of the SIP timeline, which provides for control strategy development to be completed by March 2009, the development of control strategy rule proposals by August 2009, and proposal of such rules to the TCEQ commissioners by October 2009. Agency staff also presented a review of modeling activities, and information about specific potential control strategies being considered for the HGB eight-hour ozone attainment demonstration.
TCEQ provided draft initial concept lists of potential control strategies for stationary sources and mobile sources. The list for stationary sources contains potential control strategies that would be implemented within the HGB nonattainment area (e.g., increasing control efficiency requirements in TCEQ’s Chapter 115 VOC rules for vent gas control, loading and storage), as well as ozone transport controls that would apply outside of the HGB nonattainment area (e.g., NOX controls on major sources and/or minor sources for selected source categories within a 200 kilometer range that impact the HGB area). Agency staff explained that the draft lists are preliminary and subject to change based upon additional analysis of the feasibility and effectiveness of the listed strategies, and consideration of additional potential strategies. TCEQ invited the submittal of informal comments by April 30, 2008 regarding the technical and economic feasibility of the listed strategies, potential modifications to those strategy concepts, and suggestions for additional control strategy concepts.
Information about these meetings, including links to the draft lists of potential control strategies for stationary sources and mobile sources, is available on the agency’s website.1
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1 http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/implementation/air/sip/
hgb_stakeholder.html#topic3
