Latest pollution proposals are nothing new

Haven’t we been down this road before? In 1995, the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission embarked on a mission to clean up the air in the state by forcing motorists to have their cars’ emissions tested.

That ill-fated attempt ended in a debacle for the state agency and lots of mistrust between motorists and Texas government.

The company that won the contract from the state for the emissions tests, Tejas Testing Technology, set up 65 sites across the state for such tests.

When political pressure and an irate public combined to kill the program after it was in place for less than a month, Tejas went belly up. And they sued the state for breach of contract.

Texas eventually settled the suit for $140 million. All that money and not a bit of our air cleaned.

So it strikes us as odd that on Friday, the TNRCC again announced a spate of measures aimed at cutting air pollution here to bring our region into compliance with the federal Clean Air Act, thus keeping us from losing millions in federal highway dollars.

Some of those include dropping the speed limit to 55 mph, restricting the use of small, gasoline powered lawn equipment from 6 a.m. to noon during the summer months and rules aimed at reducing nitrogen oxide emissions by 90 percent.

The new measures also include one with a dubious past: "a more effective vehicle emissions testing program.

The funny thing is that we had a testing program. There were testing sites set up in La Marque, Galveston and Clear Lake. At the time, most folks complained about waiting in lines and shelling out $23 to have their cars tested. But most also agreed that something had to be done about our filthy yellow-tinted sky that greets us on many summer evening.

So here we go again. The TNRCC is pushing these latest measures before the public to try and clean the air.

Let’s hope the state sticks to their guns this time around and gets it right.