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Atlanta’s Smog Season Ends Without Celebration By Dustin Solberg ATLANTA, Georgia, October 11, 2002 (ENS) - The Atlanta metropolitan area experiences the four seasons - spring, summer, fall and winter - and a fifth season, smog. Every year, after the five month smog season ends September 30, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division releases another set of air quality data. The news is never good, and this year, Atlanta smog season air quality was worse than it was just a year ago.
Smoggy Atlanta (Photo courtesy Department of Health and Human Services, Region 4)This year, the 13 county Atlanta region recorded 38 exceedences of federal ozone pollution standards, up from 20 in 2001. Still, the most recent data is an improvement over previous years. In 1999, the city’s air violated federal ozone limits 69 times.Bryan Hager of the Sierra Club says that Atlanta’s air pollution is the result of some 50 years of government policy that promotes urban sprawl and driving. “We drive an extraordinary amount and it has been forced upon us by government policy,” Hager says. Until these policies are reversed, Atlantans can expect more dismal smog reports because the city’s continued growth is only impeding any progress to clean the air. The population of metro Atlanta grew by nearly one million over the last 10 years and few cities rely as much on the automobile as Atlanta does. Statistics show that per capita, each Atlantan drives a total of 32 miles a day - about 28 miles of commuting and four miles of miscellaneous trips such as shopping. Only motorists in Houston, Nashville, and Birmingham drive more. Clean air advocates are particularly concerned about two components of Atlanta’s polluted air. Ground level ozone, caused by nitrogen oxides from car and truck emissions mixing with Atlanta’s summertime heat, is linked to high rates of asthma and other respiratory illness. Five coal fired power plants in metro Atlanta also contribute nitrogen oxides, along with high levels of particulates, or soot, to Atlanta’s air. The city has been ordered to meet an EPA ozone standard of less than 125 parts per billion for one hour of exposure by 2004, but Susan Zimmer-Dauphinee of the state Environmental Protection Division, the agency charged with complying with federal EPA standards, says that deadline will not be met.
Atlanta freeway at dusk (Photo courtesy Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority)The city’s Clean Air Campaign, a consortium of business, government and nonprofit organizations, has seen increasing participation in its programs, which offer incentives to carpoolers and mass transit commuters, and to businesses that encourage workers to telecommute.But the campaign is still new, and old habits die hard. Atlanta’s streets and freeways are still crowded by traditional, single occupancy, rush hour commuters. In fact, Clean Air Campaign director Mary McGovern says that traffic congestion ranks as the number one concern among residents in metro Atlanta. Air quality will not improve without considerable work, but the city has proven that a drop in traffic contributes to better air quality. During the 1996 summer Olympics, a drop in auto traffic led a considerable drop in ozone levels. To facilitate a permanent decrease in Atlanta traffic, clean air advocates say a wholesale reversal of residential development policies is a good start, since subsidized highway and sewer construction encourage sprawl. The region’s mass transit system also needs an overhaul if more commuters are expected to leave their cars at home. Even though the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority is the ninth largest transit system in the United States, providing bus, rail, and paratransit service, less than one-third of the metro area is accessible by mass transit. Officials say that enforcement of existing speed limits on the city’s freeways would reduce the number and severity of accidents, and in turn reduce the number of traffic delays, resulting in lower levels of vehicle emissions. |
