Just another non revenue producing city department. How does does this bring in new jobs. Maybe that guy on yesterday's front page get a job via this article. You know, green shoots and all that. Anyone care to relate to this?

http://www.airvictoria.org/

I agree that blaming the "Big City" for our issue is a cop out at it's worse. Prevailing summer breezes what they are, one would hardly need to look further than Calhoun and Jackson County plants for the source of the alleged "high ozone" counts. The VicAd has played the coward in calling out "bogey man" as "Houston" instead of making enemies of local production facilities.

A call to action? What actions would you have us take on?

A taxpayer funded shut down of Alcoa? Bet they would love to have us pay for their shuttering that inefficient locale.

Pay Formosa to move back to Taiwan? Koch to go back to Corpus?

AltonEaston nailed it. There is no conceivable way that local sources of ozone or any other atmospheric pollutant could result in our even approaching, much less exceeding, any sane EPA limit. Of course, that assumes that the rules emanating from the EPA are sane.

The argument put forth in this editorial to fight the enforcement of the Clean Air Act sounds like a defendant throwing himself on the mercy of the court. I read and reread this opinion, and I did not read a shred of scientific fact or other intellectually sound argument in defense of removing Victoria from the Clean Air Act. How does the editorial board propose for the city, county, school district, industry and community groups to argue the case for removing Victoria from the Clean Air Act?

This sounds like a classic example of scapegoating and a vain attempt to make the federal government the villain. While difficult to follow the logic of how and why, the suggestion is made that we are somehow being blamed for the poor air quality of Houston. Anybody can drive down US 59 near Fannin and see the great plumes of pollution streaming from the smokestacks. Anyone within miles of any of the local chemical plants can smell them from afar.

Whoever is responsible for the nebulous argument made here in this editorial should be ashamed. This fools errand you seek to send our elected officials on will only result in their ridicule as being the errand boy of some faceless higher power in Victoria. The argument that we should be exempted from the law is laughable. If you truly believe we should not be governed by the Clean Air Act you should lobby to have the law changed. I truly don't understand the logic of not complying with the act as it clearly is intended to be in the public interest. I remember the day when the horrendous smell from a rendering plant was just outside of town near Foster Field and how things were then. Is that what the Advocate seeks we return to?

I enjoyed this blog, because it just does not make sense that such a small non-industrial city (Victoria) would have ozone problems due to ozone production in the local area.

And by the way, I applaud your tackling of your air quality issue, and your efforts to create an awareness among people there to help tackle the problem. I do not however, think that little uninformed attempt to shift the blame to your neighbors to the east was either accurate, based on anything but conjecture, or called for. Kinda sounds like a little brother telling dad it was big brother's fault. In addition to traffic and pollution, I see a lot of that too.

Congratulations, Victoria Advocate Editorial Board! The intelligence of the bloggers and commenters on this site is finally infiltrating your ranks, obviously. Which one of you came up with this little vague "factoid":The battle in the 1990s determined that most of Victoria's ozone came from the Houston area because of air currents. ?????
Give me a break. Was it Houston drivers who drove to Victoria and idled their cars and trucks for an excessive amount of time? Have you done any looking into seasonal jet stream and prevailing winds around this part of the country? At no point, save for a rare nor'easter down here, is there a northeast to southwest wind direction. 8-9 months out of the year, you folks get a seabreeze flow from the tradewinds off the Gulf Of Mexico. That means you get the dregs from the air from DuPont, Dow, Alcoa, Formosa, and every plant and cow pasture full of grain eating methane dispensers between there and the coast, which by the way fuels your economy.

Yes, we here in the Houston area have our problems with ozone and pollution in our air, and we are working on cleaning up our act too, but we aren't pointing a finger at the Golden Triangle and folks in Louisiana as the "blame" for our air quality issues, as we are no more downwind from them than you are from us. So in the future, before you point the finger at the closest big city to you saying something as ambiguous and vague as "the battle in the '90s DETERMINED", why don't you do a bit of research first, and while you are at it, bring your own roads and streets up to a level that will move your traffic along and not leave drivers idling in traffic fuming and polluting the air you breathe?