Austin may miss out on VW cash
Dallas and Houston have dirtier air than capital city; governor wants to direct $209M their way.
As revelations mounted a couple of years ago that Volkswagen tampered with some of its vehicles to fool emissions testers, Austin had special reason for outrage: Its relatively greenminded denizens had purchased more of the Volkswagens, as a percentage of population, than the rest of the state.
But now, as Texas state officials prepare to release $209 million in Volkswagen pollution mitigation money, which could be used for anything from electric vehicle charging stations to upgrading school buses, Austin and neighboring Central Texas communities could find themselves losing out to Dallas and Houston.
That’s because those cities have dirtier air — and Gov. Greg Abbott has signaled he wants to spend air quality improvement money in those regions.
The question of how the money
gets divvied up — a task assigned to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — gets at the heart of the purpose of the Texas Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust, as it’s officially known, and has led to a spirited competition for the cash.
Texas will receive $209 million of a nearly $3 billion emissions mitigation settlement with the auto company, reached after Volkswagen was sued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of California in 2016.
In the lawsuit, the federal agency and California had alleged that even as Volkswagen promoted itself as a green company, it had installed devices on roughly 590,000 of its light-duty diesel vehicles designed to game pollution tests. These devices caused the emissions control system of those vehicles to perform differently during emissions testing than during normal driving. In normal use, the vehicles spewed nitrogen oxide, a component of smog, above federal standards.
Texas’ share of the mitigation money was based on the number of affected vehicles registered within its boundaries. Texas, according to documents, had 40,444 of the vehicles, including 5,386 in the greater Austin area. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex had nearly twice as many of the vehicles — 10,326 — and the Houston-Galveston area had 9,655.
But taken as a percentage of population, Austinites were nearly twice as likely as their Dallas counterparts — 0.24 percent compared with 0.15 percent — to be driving the polluting vehicles.
While that sounds like a small percentage of vehicles on the road, the offending Volkswagens were emitting as much as 40 times the pollution as other sedans and light-duty vehicles in the same model year.
“It’s a large enough effect that there’s very real damages there,” said Andrew Hoekzema, director of regional services at the Capital Area Council of Governments, a coalition of Austin-area governments.
Depending on how the fund is spent, the state commission has received proposals that suggest doling out as much as $33 million to Austin to pay for everything from cleaner-emitting buses to fleet conversions to electric vehicles.
“Texas can use this funding to modernize fleets and expand the alternative infrastructure within the state,” Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt and Hays County Judge Bert Cobb wrote in a joint 2017 letter to Abbott. “This funding could mean increased capital investment in the state, more jobs, better vehicles and equipment in service, and cleaner, healthier air for all Texans.”
But the three commissioners overseeing the agency are gubernatorial appointees — one by Abbott, the two others by Rick Perry — and Abbott has indicated he might be disinclined to direct wealth toward those communities.
In June, the governor announced a line-item veto of $6,000,500 appropriated for air quality programs in Austin, Waco, El Paso, Beaumont, Corpus Christi, Granbury, Killeen-Temple, Longview-Tyler-Marshall, San Antonio and Victoria — parts of the state that have managed to narrowly meet federal clean air standards.
Abbott instead wants to focus his attention on cities that chronically fail federal air standards, such as Houston and Dallas.
“This program funds, among other items, bicycle use programs, carpooling awareness, environmental awareness campaigns, and locally enforceable pollution reduction programs,” Abbott said. “Resources in the Clean Air Account should be prioritized to directly address problems in our non-attainment areas of the state” — that is, areas of the state that failed clean air standards — “so that we are better positioned to combat the business-stifling regulations imposed on these areas by the Environmental Protection Agency.”
With few heavily polluting industries in Central Texas, Austin has stayed just this side of federal smog standards.
But it has still long labored to keep the area clean. Austin-area drivers spend roughly $20 million on vehicle inspections and repairs per year to ratchet down smog levels.
About three-fourths of the money comes through the $16 vehicle emissions inspection that motorists of Travis and Williamson counties pay for annually. The rest comes out of motorists’ pockets; a new air filter to pass inspection, for example, is covered by the driver.
The federal smog standards are meant to reduce premature deaths, asthma, bronchitis, hospital visits and days when people miss work or school.
Meanwhile, a number of interests have submitted their own ideas to the state commission since December about how the money should be used.
Tesla, Ford and General Motors, all manufacturers of electric cars, have asked the state to use Volkswagen settlement money to pay for electric vehicle infrastructure, such as plug-in stations beside highways.
The Natural Gas Alliance naturally wants the money to go toward natural gas filling stations.
Brian Gibson, director of transportation at the New Braunfels Independent School District, recommended that school bus replacement “be considered as the highest priority” for the Volkswagen money.
Commission spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said a draft plan will be unveiled in the next several months. After open meetings and a public comment period, the mitigation plan could be finalized by the fall, she said.