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We can find solutions, or someone else will do it

by Frank Cagle

The air quality in Knox and surrounding counties has been ruled unacceptable and something is going to have to be done about it. The choices are to come up with our own solutions or someone will do it for us.

If air quality isn’t improved there will be no more industry locations, and the state has already proposed emissions testing for all our cars and trucks. County Mayor Mike Ragsdale got a 90-day extension from the Air Quality Control Board on testing to come up with alternatives.

In other words, it’s time to get serious about the environment, or else.

Emissions testing won’t do anything about tourist or the interstate traffic that passes through the region. The choices are government agencies doing testing and then taking vehicles to a private shop to get work done—then going back for another test. That’s three workdays shot to hell. Or let private firms do the testing and create the possibility of massive consumer rip-offs.

Limiting burning, preventing diesel trucks from idling at truck stops and other measures that have been proposed are good ideas. But they won’t be enough to satisfy requirements.

Maybe it’s time for big ideas.

One of them is to provide tax incentives to put ethanol in all our local gas stations. This helps with local traffic and interstate traffic and tourists. Using ethanol cuts down on vehicle pollution. If three to five cents of the state gasoline tax were taken off the pumps selling ethanol, it would be an incentive for distributors to carry it and for customers to buy it. Ethanol has not been competitive in the market place, but with gasoline at $2 a gallon and with a tax reduction it could be.

We could start in counties that have been ruled in violation of air quality standards.

State Rep. Jamie Hagood, expected to soon be state Sen. Jamie Hagood, has a bill that would do this. It has support from other legislators. Frank Niceley, the Republican nominee for Hagood’s House seat has proposed similar legislation, and it is supported by Parkey Strader, Republican nominee for House 14th District. Given the alternatives, it shouldn’t be hard to round up additional legislative support for the idea.

Government agencies, huge employers in the Knoxville region, could encourage workers to use ethanol and require it in all government vehicles.

We also have thousands of commuters who go to an office and work on a computer. How many of these jobs could be done from home? Have we ever really looked at telecommuting as a serious alternative? We have BellSouth fiber optic cable readily available. We also have a lot of people that work for government agencies. TVA, DOE, UT, and public hospitals account for a huge portion of our workforce. If these government agencies signed on to reduce the number of workers required to commute every day, it would make a substantial dent in vehicle emissions.

Back in the 1970s we had vanpool programs where government agencies helped organize employees to ride vans to work. In a time of $2-per-gallon gasoline there is a real incentive for commuters to carpool.

Nashville has one lane of Interstate 65, a principal commuter route, dedicated to High Occupancy Vehicles. Could this be done on Pellissippi Parkway?

We can also look at hot spots.

TVA has a program to reduce smokestack pollution at its coal-fired plants. Given the agency’s debt it has resisted moving faster and spending more money sooner. Should our congressional delegation get involved in this effort? Should there be a special appropriation and tax credits that could step up pollution abatement at all coal-fired plants in the nation? Some of our pollution is coming from Ohio and points north, as well as TVA plants.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visible victim of air pollution. Carry through with and make permanent parking tourists cars in Townsend and take them to Cades Cove in buses. Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge could certainly do more to encourage tourists to park their cars when they arrive and use public trolleys to get around.

There are all sorts of ideas. Financial incentives could do a lot to reduce vehicle emissions. Encouragement is certainly preferable to laws and draconian regulations. Not to mention the enforcement nightmare.

There are those who refuse to believe that we really have a problem. It is going to be hard for public officials to step up and impose regulations like emissions testing. It will certainly be easier for them to support voluntary programs and ethanol. We would all like to save some money with the high cost of gasoline.

But it’s time to be creative.

Frank Cagle is a political analyst and the host of Sound Off on WIVK FM107.7, WNOX AM990, FM99.1 and FM99.3 each Sunday 8-9:30 a.m. The program is pre-empted this week by Sports Sound Off, coverage of the Vols versus South Carolina football game.

October 28, 2004 • Vol 14, No. 44 © 2004 Metro Pulse