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Notes: Despite smokey conditions, new report shows dramatic gains in air quality for the region

By ALXnow.com

Good Friday morning, Alexandria!

⛈️ Today’s weather: Isolated showers between noon and 2pm, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2pm. Widespread haze. Areas of smoke before 2pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 76. Northwest wind 6 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. At night: Scattered showers and thunderstorms before 8pm. Widespread haze before 1am. Patchy smoke between 8pm and 1am. Partly cloudy, with a low around 57. West wind around 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

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GenOn Power Plant (staff photo by Vernon Miles)

While air quality was terrible this week in Alexandria, a new report from Greater Greater Washington offered an optimistic look at how far the region has come since “Code Red” days were commonplace.

This week, the wildfires caused by massive forest fires in Canada sent a cloud of smoke across the whole region. Years ago, however, the culprit was smog.

The Greater Greater Washington report noted that smog has virtually disappeared from D.C. and many other American cities over the past few decades.

How did we get smog to virtually disappear? In no small part it’s due to successful government regulation of cars.

The biggest change over the past two decades has been in emissions from cars. New ones pollute much less than old ones. Partly that’s thanks to hybrid and electric cars, but it’s also partly thanks to cleaner internal combustion engines. EPA Vehicle Emissions Standards force car-makers to build cleaner cars over time.

There are plenty of loopholes, and reducing smog isn’t the same as reducing climate-change-causing carbon, so there remains a long way to go, but a lot has been achieved.

For D.C. specifically, the report pointed to a big change in Alexandria.

“Locally, the 2012 closure of a big coal power plant in Alexandria lines right up with the single most sudden decline in bad air days,” the Greater Greater Washington report said. “It was a big deal.”

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