By Brown                                              S.C.R. No. 35
         77R4396 NBH-D                           
                                CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
 1-1           WHEREAS, Air pollution has a potentially serious impact on
 1-2     the health of many Americans, including a majority of the nearly 21
 1-3     million residents of the State of Texas, and is a matter of concern
 1-4     to both federal and state governments, which share a responsibility
 1-5     to clean up the environment and protect the public health; and
 1-6           WHEREAS, In metropolitan areas where the problem is most
 1-7     severe, achieving federally mandated reductions in the emission of
 1-8     certain pollutants within the time lines established by the U. S.
 1-9     Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be possible only through
1-10     an appropriate combination of federal, state, and local actions,
1-11     including not only stringent local and state emission controls but
1-12     also the timely implementation of federal controls; and
1-13           WHEREAS, Emissions may be regulated by either the state's
1-14     environmental regulation agency or the federal government,
1-15     depending on their origin; and
1-16           WHEREAS, For example, emissions from an industrial facility,
1-17     such as a utility company or petroleum refinery, are subject to
1-18     state regulations, while gasoline and diesel fuel standards and
1-19     emissions from aircraft, airport ground support equipment,
1-20     automobiles, trucks, marine engines, and locomotives are all
1-21     federally controlled; and
1-22           WHEREAS, Under recent federal action, the EPA will require
1-23     buses and commercial trucks to produce 95 percent less pollution
1-24     than today's buses and trucks and will require the amount of sulfur
 2-1     in diesel fuel to be reduced by 97 percent; these measures alone
 2-2     are expected to cut air pollution by as much as 95 percent; and
 2-3           WHEREAS, At issue is the fact that the low-sulfur diesel fuel
 2-4     provisions will not go into effect before 2006, and diesel fuel
 2-5     engine manufacturers will have flexibility in meeting the new
 2-6     emission standards due to phase in between 2007 and 2010; the slow
 2-7     rate of turnover among commercial fleets means that these federal
 2-8     emission control measures will likely have little effect until
 2-9     several years after that, when a sufficient number of these trucks
2-10     and buses are in operation; and
2-11           WHEREAS, Currently, the State of Texas has nine metropolitan
2-12     areas that either have been designated as nonattainment areas by
2-13     the EPA or are close to exceeding the National Ambient Air Quality
2-14     Standards (NAAQS) for one or more of the regulated pollutants;
2-15     these nonattainment or near-nonattainment areas have been given
2-16     strict time lines for their emission reduction efforts based on the
2-17     severity of pollution in the area; and
2-18           WHEREAS, Because of the lengthy time line for the  reduction
2-19     of emissions from federally controlled sources, the federally
2-20     mandated attainment date for some NAAQS nonattainment regions in
2-21     Texas, such as the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria area, will arrive
2-22     long before the effects of federal air quality improvement efforts
2-23     can be realized; and
2-24           WHEREAS, Texas is forced to require state-controlled emission
2-25     sources to make significant reductions in pollution in a relatively
2-26     short period of time while federally controlled sources continue to
2-27     contaminate the state's environment; and
 3-1           WHEREAS, The incongruence in the federal and state time lines
 3-2     for emission reductions places an undue burden on the state to
 3-3     lower air pollution significantly enough to be in attainment with
 3-4     the NAAQS without a corresponding decrease in emissions from any of
 3-5     the myriad federally controlled emission sources; now, therefore,
 3-6     be it
 3-7           RESOLVED, That the 77th Legislature of the State of Texas
 3-8     hereby respectfully urge the Congress of the United States to
 3-9     require federally controlled emission sources to reduce their
3-10     emissions by the same percentages and on the same schedule as
3-11     state-controlled sources; and, be it further
3-12           RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official
3-13     copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to
3-14     the speaker of the house of representatives and the president of
3-15     the senate of the United States Congress, and to all members of the
3-16     Texas delegation to the congress with the request that this
3-17     resolution be officially entered in the Congressional Record as a
3-18     memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.