Air pollution: New name, same game

Good. The 1991 Legislature had imposed the gawky old name because it wanted nothing to do with the word "environment." The 2001 Legislature rightly mandated the new name because it thought that it would better reflect the agency's mission, which is to protect Texas' air, water and soil.

But perhaps the Legislature that will convene in January should consider changing the agency's name yet again. Perhaps it should give it a name that reflects not its mission but its performance in fulfilling that mission. Perhaps it should call it the Commission on Pollution Accommodation.

Sound caustic? Perhaps it is. But as any resident of Dallas-Fort Worth could tell you, so is the region's polluted air.

The agency's three appointed commissioners may be insulted by the suggestion, but the bad condition of the air is by far the greater insult – on people's burning eyes, throats and lungs.

So far this year, the region has exceeded the "eight-hour" standard for the pollutant ozone 32 times and the more lenient "one-hour" standard seven times. Fine soot – which bypasses the body's respiratory defenses and lodges deep in lungs, where it can cause cancer and other deadly ailments – also has been hugely abundant.

That has the Texas Commission on (ahem) Environmental Quality done to mitigate the situation? Not much. The clean air plan that the agency proposed in April 2000 was built on optimistic assumptions. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rightly warned during the summer that it would reject the plan unless the 2003 Legislature bolsters it.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's latest insult was the slap on the wrist that it gave the Holcim cement plant in Ellis County for its repeated air pollution violations. Instead of using its ample authority to send a signal that it is serious about protecting the public's health, the agency fined Holcim a comparatively weak $223,125.

Until Dallas-Fort Worth gets breathable air, the state's environmental agency should have the name that it deserves.