Travis County Commissioners Court
May 3, 2005
Item 21
21 is to consider and take appropriate action on county-wide implementation of commute reductions and ozone action day response programs for early action compact commitments. While we're waiting on you, on 27 should we wait for next week?
>> yes.
>> I put this on just because it came from the mayor. I think if it addresses some action to be taken, if not, I certainly don't have anybody I want to recommend, but I did think at some point we ought to give a response to that one, okay? So 27 have back on next week, is that okay? We can do it without you, right, Commissioner Davis? We may not have any response for that anyway. Sorry about that.
>> no problem. Charlene walker with Travis County air quality project. This is an agenda item requesting that the court sign the draft letter. I just passed out a little bit of an updated version of it than what you had in your backup. Really it was just a few typos that we corrected. And the memo would accompany a package of information that would go to 35 different department heads throughout Travis County asking them to assist the Commissioners court in their commitment to reduce air pollution emissions throughout Travis County. We're asking that they get involved in two specific commitments that the court made under the early action compact. The solutions are to meet reduction program that we committed to as a county, and an ozone action day response program. I’m happy to go into more detail about those programs if you would like me to, but that's basically what the action today is is that you sign a memo to each of these Austin elected officials and other departments asking them to please work with myself and other staff members throughout the county to implement these programs.
>> we did have this in the backup. Did you make major changes or just minor ones?
>> just minor typos.
>> okay. Questions?
>> ned granger is -- fourth fourth paragraph says ganger instead of granger. And I am a little uncomfortable with us making a statement, Travis County's air quality is currently in violation of the federal clean air act health standards because the whole point of early action compact was for us to avoid that category. And I don't want to be at some point to say, well, y'all signed off on a document that says you were in violation. There are some things that we did to avoid --
>> we have not been designated a non-attainment.
>> if you could tweak that to not declare that we are violating federal law.
>> is monitoring okay?
>> maybe as part of the new federal clean air act standards, we agree to participate, da, da, da, da. Just something to kind of like stay away from the declare active statement that we're violating federal law. It just isn't an accurate statement.
>> we are not.
>> well, it is a fact that our value is defact tow in violation.
>> were it not for the early action compact we could be declared in non-attainment.
>> so the violation is excused because of the early action compact, in a nutshell.
>> I think. It's a serious situation, so I agree that we ought to not use violation, but I think they ought to know that our current -- i'd rather refer to it as a value. It's really below the required e.p.a. Standard, right?
>> it is not. Our design value, which is the term that we have to use, the three year's average data is currently above the violation point under the clean air act is 85 parts per billion. If you want to be in attainment, you need to be below 85 parts per million.
>> except for the early action compact, we would be there. The designation would be non-attainment. But because of the early action compact, they have given us until 2007 to come back into compliance. So what if we just ask you to put it in different words, run it by the court, change it up, unless you want to wordsmith it in here right now. So it is a serious situation, but at the same time we don't want to say we're in violation because it's been excused.
>> right. I can e-mail you a new sentence and get your okay on that. And we would like to get the letter out because we do -- we have a meeting on the 23rd which is mentioned in your letter for all these folks to learn more about how to help with this issue.
>> I designate Commissioner Sonleitner as the county judge's wordsmith on this matter.
>> thank you. [overlapping speakers].
>> isn't it true that in a new calculation if we drop off the third year and we don't exceed next year, that we will not be beyond?
>> it is always a three-year rolling average.
>> so we could be.
>> we could be.
>> if we don't exceed it this year, because we are going to drop off a bad year. So if we drop it off, then we won't be in that situation. I want to maiblg sure that everybody --
>> the way we're having a good year is taking these steps here.
>> ride your bicycle to court next week. [ laughter ]
>> if it's beyond our control because if the forest fires continue in mexico, we've got a bad situation getting ready to hit us and we can't do anything about it. [overlapping speakers].
>> if you can get the words capital metro in here as opposed to part of the capital area metropolitan planning organization.
>> any more organization? All in favor? It passes unanimously. You caught the drift of what we were suggesting there, right?
>> yes, sir, I did. Thank you very much.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 4, 2005 10:33 AM