1-1     By:  Brown                                            S.C.R. No. 35
 1-2           (In the Senate - Filed March 7, 2001; March 12, 2001, read
 1-3     first time and referred to Committee on Natural Resources;
 1-4     April 5, 2001, reported favorably by the following vote:  Yeas 4,
 1-5     Nays 0; April 5, 2001, sent to printer.)
 1-6                        SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
 1-7           WHEREAS, Air pollution has a potentially serious impact on
 1-8     the health of many Americans, including a majority of the nearly 21
 1-9     million residents of the State of Texas, and is a matter of concern
1-10     to both federal and state governments, which share a responsibility
1-11     to clean up the environment and protect the public health; and
1-12           WHEREAS, In metropolitan areas where the problem is most
1-13     severe, achieving federally mandated reductions in the emission of
1-14     certain pollutants within the time lines established by the United
1-15     States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be possible only
1-16     through an appropriate combination of federal, state, and local
1-17     actions, including not only stringent local and state emission
1-18     controls but also the timely implementation of federal controls;
1-19     and
1-20           WHEREAS, Emissions may be regulated by either the state's
1-21     environmental regulation agency or the federal government,
1-22     depending on their origin; and
1-23           WHEREAS, For example, emissions from an industrial facility,
1-24     such as a utility company or petroleum refinery, are subject to
1-25     state regulations, while gasoline and diesel fuel standards and
1-26     emissions from aircraft, airport ground support equipment,
1-27     automobiles, trucks, marine engines, and locomotives are all
1-28     federally controlled; and
1-29           WHEREAS, Under recent federal action, the EPA will require
1-30     buses and commercial trucks to produce 95 percent less pollution
1-31     than today's buses and trucks and will require the amount of sulfur
1-32     in diesel fuel to be reduced by 97 percent; these measures alone
1-33     are expected to cut air pollution by as much as 95 percent; and
1-34           WHEREAS, At issue is the fact that the low-sulfur diesel fuel
1-35     provisions will not go into effect before 2006, and diesel fuel
1-36     engine manufacturers will have flexibility in meeting the new
1-37     emission standards due to phase in between 2007 and 2010; the slow
1-38     rate of turnover among commercial fleets means that these federal
1-39     emission control measures will likely have little effect until
1-40     several years after that, when a sufficient number of these trucks
1-41     and buses are in operation; and
1-42           WHEREAS, Currently, the State of Texas has nine metropolitan
1-43     areas that either have been designated as nonattainment areas by
1-44     the EPA or are close to exceeding the National Ambient Air Quality
1-45     Standards (NAAQS) for one or more of the regulated pollutants;
1-46     these nonattainment or near-nonattainment areas have been given
1-47     strict time lines for their emission reduction efforts based on the
1-48     severity of pollution in the area; and
1-49           WHEREAS, Because of the lengthy time line for the  reduction
1-50     of emissions from federally controlled sources, the federally
1-51     mandated attainment date for some NAAQS nonattainment regions in
1-52     Texas, such as the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria area, will arrive
1-53     long before the effects of federal air quality improvement efforts
1-54     can be realized; and
1-55           WHEREAS, Texas is forced to require state-controlled emission
1-56     sources to make significant reductions in pollution in a relatively
1-57     short period of time while federally controlled sources continue to
1-58     contaminate the state's environment; and
1-59           WHEREAS, The incongruence in the federal and state time lines
1-60     for emission reductions places an undue burden on the state to
1-61     lower air pollution significantly enough to be in attainment with
1-62     the NAAQS without a corresponding decrease in emissions from any of
1-63     the myriad federally controlled emission sources; now, therefore,
1-64     be it
 2-1           RESOLVED, That the 77th Legislature of the State of Texas
 2-2     hereby respectfully urge the Congress of the United States to
 2-3     require federally controlled emission sources to reduce their
 2-4     emissions by the same percentages and on the same schedule as
 2-5     state-controlled sources; and, be it further
 2-6           RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official
 2-7     copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to
 2-8     the speaker of the house of representatives and the president of
 2-9     the senate of the United States Congress, and to all members of the
2-10     Texas delegation to the congress with the request that this
2-11     resolution be officially entered in the Congressional Record as a
2-12     memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.
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