EDITORIAL: Great news for Middle Georgia that most know little about
Some issues never rise to the public’s attention until there is bad news on the horizon. Such is the case with air quality attainment and non-attainment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets air quality standards, and if an area does not meet those standards they are in non-attainment. That’s exactly what was about to happen a dozen years ago when the EPA was on the verge of designating Bibb, Houston and Monroe counties non-compliant with the eight-hour ozone regulation. This was not good news. The EPA eventually took most of Monroe and Houston off the non-attainment list, leaving only Bibb and a portion of Monroe, but the new proposed standard for ozone was even lower.
Why is all of this important? Before an industry decides to locate anywhere, it wants to know the cost of doing business. If it locates in an area that’s in non-attainment, the extra air pollution controls cost money. And there’s more, from enhanced regulatory oversight from the EPA to the loss of federal highway and transit funding.
And there is the impact non-attainment could have on Robins Air Force Base. Back in 2003, as today, the base has the ever-looming specter of a base realignment and closure panel, and one of the boxes that must be checked in two places is air quality. One check box is for deciding whether the base is viable; the other, if the first is affirmative, asks the question, is the base eligible to take on additional missions and would those missions impact air quality? The Air Force wouldn’t put more flying missions at a base located in an area that was already failing air quality standards.
Twelve years ago, Middle Georgia responded by forming the Middle Georgia Clean Air Coalition that includes all the mayors and chairs of the county commissions in the seven-county area that had 13 cities, and it got to work. It involved private industry, colleges and universities, school systems and others. Municipal fleets were retrofitted. Landfill gases are converted to energy, and electric vehicles and charging stations appeared, Interstate 75 became a biofuels corridor and green education efforts drilled down to the household level. According to EPA officials, what MGCAC started has become a model for other communities to emulate.
Last week, the EPA announced that the entire region was in attainment. Chairman of the Houston County Commission Tommy Stalnaker said he was, “ecstatic. It was a long process, but it’s not over. We can celebrate today, but the celebration needs to be short. We have to continue to work.”
One of the driving forces behind this success is the former chairman of the MGCAC, Ned Sanders. He will be honored Thursday with a scholarship fund in his name for a student studying clean energy at Mercer University. It’s an honor well-deserved.
This story was originally published October 13, 2015 at 9:34 PM with the headline "EDITORIAL: Great news for Middle Georgia that most know little about ."