Sep 22 - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Scott Streater Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Regional leaders and environmental groups are stepping up efforts to persuade the state not to approve construction of six power plants that could worsen air quality in Dallas-Fort Worth.

The proposed power plants, all planned within 250 miles south and southwest of the Metroplex, have prompted scores of questions and complaints from regional leaders and environmentalists.

But Larry Soward, a top state regulator, says the state has no intention of permitting the plants without fully evaluating the effect on air quality in the region, which is struggling to comply with federal ozone standards by 2010.

"We want to make sure that whatever type of facility we have coming in to these areas, that we have the total assessment and evaluation of the air-quality impacts," said Soward, a commissioner with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. "We've got to be diligent throughout this process any time a new or different source of air emissions comes into play."

The state has not approved any of the power plants, one of which would be 90 miles south of Fort Worth near Waco. If built, they would emit a total of 14,858 tons per year of nitrogen oxides -- the chief man-made component of ground-level ozone.

Although the state has not determined how much of those emissions would be blown into the region, statewide air patterns show that Metroplex winds often come from the south.

The county judges in Tarrant, Dallas, Denton and Collin counties recently wrote a letter asking Glenn Shankle, executive director of the state commission, to outline what effect the new plants would have on the region's air quality.

"We certainly understand the necessity for North Texas to maintain a sufficient supply of electricity," the judges wrote. "We hope that we can build our utility infrastructure without compromising our clean-air goals."

That's exactly what could happen, says Marc Chytilo, a Santa Barbara, Calif., lawyer representing three environmental groups -- the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and Downwinders at Risk -- opposed to the new plants.

The three groups are "gravely concerned" that the plants will adversely affect air quality in the region, preventing the area from complying with ozone standards by 2010, Chytilo wrote in a seven-page letter to Shankle.

Thus, unless it can show that all areas that would be affected by the power plants will comply with the federal standards by the deadline, "the state should not authorize any emissions increases from sources that affect regional ozone concentrations," Chytilo wrote.

Regional leaders are already considering drastic steps to meet the federal deadline. Among them: banning charcoal grilling and charging higher vehicle inspection fees for older cars, which emit more ozone-forming pollution.

The more industrial pollution that blows into the area, environmentalists say, the more local motorists and businesses will have to do to bring the region into compliance