On July 17, 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially designated Bexar County as nonattainment for the 2015 ozone standard. On the same day, seven other counties in the San Antonio area received an attainment/unclassifiable designation including Atascosa, Bandera, Comal, Guadalupe, Kendall, Medina, and Wilson.
"We were hoping for a different outcome but prepared for the designation," said Sid Martinez, Executive Director of the Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization. "A nonattainment designation will change our transportation planning process in that we will have to do additional analysis of projects in our short and long-range plan to ensure they do not negatively impact our air quality."
Metropolitan Planning Organizations, like the AAMPO, are required by Federal law to update their long-range Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP) at least every five years. This document includes strategies, actions and projects that will lead to “an integrated multimodal transportation system to facilitate the safe and efficient movement of people and goods.” Federal funds cannot be used for transportation projects unless they are included in an adopted long-range plan. The MTP must also be financially constrained by the reasonably expected level of transportation funding.
Under nonattainment, the MPO will be required to update the Metropolitan Transportation Plan ever four years, as well as develop a Transportation Conformity Document. Transportation conformity is a test in which transportation activities in an MPO’s long and short-range plans must be shown to not cause new air quality violations, worsen existing violations, or delay timely attainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).
MPO staff has been working closely with the Texas Department of Transportation and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute over the past two years to prepare for the possibility of being declared nonattainment. This included extensive training on the transportation conformity process for MPO planners, as well as training on the air quality model used to prepare a Transportation Conformity Document.
"Our staff has worked hard to prepare for this scenario and now we're ready to implement everything we've learned," said Mr. Martinez. "While nonattainment will change our planning process, we are prepared to do the work necessary to improve the region’s air quality while avoiding any disruptions to projects in our short and long range plans."
The nonattainment designation will take effect 60 days after a notice summarizing the action is published in the Federal Register. At that point, the MPO will have one year to submit an approved Transportation Conformity Document along with the region's short and long range plans.
