Fire-breathing EPA

March 24, 2010

As I leaned into the conversation, I could feel the heat begin to soak my forehead.

Thankfully the talk was about safety, which must have triggered my subconscious to look up at the hissing propane heat lamp just outside a martini lounge on Vine Street in a cold and snowy Cincinnati during the World of Asphalt. When you are tall like me, fireballs floating 7 ft in the air are serious burn units.

As I leaned into the conversation, I could feel the heat begin to soak my forehead.

Thankfully the talk was about safety, which must have triggered my subconscious to look up at the hissing propane heat lamp just outside a martini lounge on Vine Street in a cold and snowy Cincinnati during the World of Asphalt. When you are tall like me, fireballs floating 7 ft in the air are serious burn units.

I stopped short of a burning flesh head that night, but I would have endured a scalding moment or two just to be part of the silica-dust storyline being drummed up by a group of Payne & Dolan highway contractors. Of course, I still had to scrape a bit of a frosty greeting after it was announced that I was part of the media. However, once I interjected a few industry-laced comments about the breathing hazard and what the industry wanted to do about it, I was quickly summoned into the camaraderie. Forget the lamp, it was feeling more like the six of us were surrounding a fire-powered urban-neighborhood trash can and trading stories about family, politics and the ills of the common man.

Payne & Dolan certainly did treat this potential breathing concern like they were looking out for their own brother or sister. None of them wanted to expose their workers to the byproduct spilling from milling machines—and an upcoming study conducted by the National Asphalt Pavement Association was going to define the line once and for all.

Hour-long blockade

The Environmental Protection Agency also has been warming up around its newfound power to regulate car emissions, all in an effort to cleanse what we suck into our lungs. The agency recently used its assistant administrator for air and radiation, Gina McCarthy, to bang a few words together and create a daunting spark. At a transportation conference, McCarthy called for a reduction in vehicle-miles traveled. The EPA had now gone public, and a backdraft followed weeks later behind the announcement of a new “one-hour standard” for nitrogen dioxide levels along highways. When enacted, the regulation will place hundreds of areas, particularly those of urban descent, on the “nonattainment” list. That means they would be ineligible for federal funding.

Can you hear it breathing? The Obama administration’s livability initiative has clearly and definitively taken on a life of its own. They want us to take a foot off the gas pedal and gently stroke a flower pedal. The time is now to fill light-rail transit and summon high-speed rail.

Well, do not allow me to throw this leafy movement into a wood-burning stove, but I do have a few questions that deserve clarification. The first is how the U.S. is going to flock to this ark attached to rail when most systems, particularly at the local transit level, are in abysmal shape. In fact, operations are at their worst in Obama’s self-proclaimed hometown, where the transit agency just announced massive cuts in service due to a depleting budget. My follow-up question is: Since the EPA will now create firewalls around funding for areas that are in violation, how does the agency expect these polluted-labeled areas to improve the corridors and in essence reduce that dangerous nitrogen dioxide level?

But what truly blackens my spirit toward this environmental approach is the fact that the federal government is willing to spend the necessary resources for the production and installation of all these nitrogen-dioxide sensors that will monitor countless miles of roads—yet cannot muster up the political rashness it will take for the real solution that involves an increase in capacity at the road and transit level. That reality alone should make us all hot heads.

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