Houston Residents Now Breathing Fresher Air

Houston, TX (AHN) - Air quality has been improving in Houston. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the city logged 16 straight days of ground level ozone readings above federal standards. Houston managed to achieve that before only 60 times annually.

But Houston may again struggle to meet federal health benchmarks in the coming months as the bar is being raised again.

Since Houston was named most polluted city in the U.S. in 1999, the number of days in which the city registered bad ozone readings was down 74 percent for the first time. While the city is making some progress, other cities in California which are also among the top polluters are making less progress. San Joaquin Valley, which has factories and suburbs within a 300-mile stretch, logged 82 days of bad ozone days, while Los Angeles had 79 days.

Houston officials attributed the improvement in the city's air quality to stricter environmental regulations enforced in the place and better weather particularly cooler temperatures and less continent winds, said Bryan Lambeth, senior meteorologist of TCEQ.

In other parts of Texas, the Dallas Urban Forest Advisory Committee launched a pilot program which seeks to identify and count trees in the city to evaluate their financial and environmental contribution to Dallas. The program uses a device similar to a radar and a high-resolution camera attached to a special aircraft that captures the data near Turtle Creek and Reverchon Park.

Houston, Colleyville and Plano had previously undertaken similar ventures before, but did the tree count manually.