Houston's first deadline to meet federal health standards for ozone was 1975. Now, 32 years later, we still haven't reached that goal, and Governor Perry is asking the EPA to extend our deadline (yet again) to 2018, according to a Houston Chronicle article by Dina Cappiello.

Texas officially asked the federal government Friday for an extra nine years to meet health standards for ground-level ozone, saying that it would be "practicably impossible" for the eight-county Houston-Galveston region to comply with the law by 2010.

On Monday, June 4, the air quality monitor at Wallisville Road in Baytown exceeded the 1-hour ozone standard for the second day this year. As a result, the Houston region lost its last hope of meeting the 2007 deadline for attaining the 1-hour standard – or rather, of getting an extension of it.

According to federal guidelines, a region can meet the standard if it has no more than three exceedances in three years at any one monitor. For the period of 2005-2007, Houston blew that chance in the first year. However, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took the position that Houston would be eligible for an extension if no monitor in the region exceeded the standard more than once during 2007.