Aug 27 - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Scott Streater Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

State Rep. Lon Burnam wants environmental regulators to prove to him that building six power plants upwind of Dallas/Fort Worth wouldn't hurt local efforts to clean the air.

Burnam, D-Fort Worth, sent a two-page letter Friday to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality expressing "great concern" over the "environmental and health implications" of building the plants.

The plants, all of which would be within 250 miles south and southwest of the Metroplex, have been proposed as the nine-county region races to meet federal ozone standards by 2010. If it cannot, the region faces severe federal sanctions.

Regional leaders are considering drastic steps, including banning charcoal grilling and charging higher vehicle inspection fees for older cars, which tend to emit more ozone-forming pollution.

The more industrial pollution blows into the area, environmentalists say, the more motorists and businesses will have to do to bring the region into compliance with ozone standards.

The six plants would emit 14,858 tons per year of nitrogen oxides, the chief man-made component of ground-level ozone.

Although the state has not determined how much of that would blow into Dallas/Fort Worth, statewide air patterns show that Metroplex winds often come out of the south.

The environmental commission has not approved any of the plants, one of which would be 90 miles south of Fort Worth near Waco.

State officials said Friday that they had not seen Burnam's letter.

David Schanbacher, the commission's chief engineer, said he disagrees with assertions that the plants would undermine air-cleanup efforts.

He said tougher state laws have cut nitrogen oxide emissions from East Texas power plants by 85,640 tons annually since 1997.

But the region must slash hundreds of tons of pollutants each year to meet federal ozone standards, environmentalists said.

"You need every ounce of reduction you can get," said Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk, a local clean-air group.

"For every ounce of reduction you get from driving with cleaner gasoline or from lower emissions from the cement kilns in Midlothian, if there's a power plant just down the road that's putting all that back into the air, you haven't gotten very far toward meeting the standards."