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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (186734)	4/18/2004 6:38:27 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1578127

Now you "be" really opening up a can of worms... Which can of worms?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (186734)	4/19/2004 11:01:11 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578127

Area a model of air-quality control after years of smog Fri Apr 16, 7:19 AM ET Add Top Stories - USATODAY.com to My Yahoo! By Traci Watson, USA TODAY For much of the past 25 years, smog hung over the Tampa area - a blemish on a region that sought to lure tourists and retirees with sunshine and beaches. Sometimes the smog was so thick in the 1980s that officials warned everyone to limit outdoor activity. And in 1991, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) listed the two biggest counties here - Pinellas and Hillsborough - as among the 371 counties with the nation's worst smog problem. But now, the Tampa area can boast that its smog problem is officially over. On Thursday, EPA released an updated list of America's smoggiest places. Pinellas and Hillsborough counties aren't on the new list, because their air is clean enough to meet even the more stringent smog guidelines the EPA uses now. "It's a great credit to the Tampa area," says Stan Meiberg, an EPA official who oversees Florida's environmental programs. And the Tampa area, in many ways, is a model for what it takes to clean dirty air. Banishing smog was not easy. It took the Tampa area enormous planning and effort - and air quality control measures that sometimes roused the ire of citizens. Among the most hated measures was the smog check program. In 1991, Florida began requiring a tailpipe test for vehicles in smoggy counties. Drivers had to cough up $10 for the test. Loud opposition helped end the program in 2000. But the test helped get smoke-belching junkers off the road. And it discouraged people from tampering with the pollution control systems on their cars. Before the testing program started, the Tampa area had the highest tampering rate in the nation. Many residents also opposed another step that helped reduce smog: a 1-cent increase in the sales tax in Pinellas County. Some of the proceeds paid for wider roads and improvements to intersections, which reduce traffic congestion. That, in turn, helps cut pollution from cars because emission control systems work less effectively when cars are idling. In nearby Hillsborough County, officials helped reduce smog by beefing up enforcement of air quality laws. That led to the closing of some polluters, such as a cement plant in downtown Tamp. But it led others, such as fertilizer plants, to cut their emissions. Even so, the largest share of credit for cutting smog in the Tampa area goes not to local officials, but to the EPA. It was the EPA that, in the 1980s, required automakers to produce cleaner cars. And it was the EPA that forced the cleanup of two power plants in Tampa. Under settlement agreements, the plants will cut their emissions of nitrogen oxides - a major smog-forming pollutant - tenfold by 2011. That will cut emission of nitrogen oxides in the Tampa area by nearly a third. "Our power plants are now some of the cleanest in the country," says Sterlin Woodard, an air pollution official for Hillsborough County. "And all that is because of enforcement ... of the Clean Air Act." Woodard and other local officials say the power plant cleanup should help prevent the area's smog problem from getting worse again. But they fear explosive population growth could eventually unravel their efforts. "We can't relax," says Leroy Shelton, an air management official in Hillsborough County.