n a free-wheeling state where driving is seen almost as a birthright, the proposals sound positively un-Texan. Lower freeway speed limits to 55 miles per hour? Require people to take the bus to work once a week? Ban heavy construction vehicles in the morning?
Under pressure from the federal government, regulators in Austin today will debate just such proposals as they try to clean up air pollution in urban areas such as Houston, which replaced Los Angeles as the nation's smog capital this year.
Yet, even as the administration of Governor George W. Bush talks about tough actions, Texas lobbyists are trying to seriously weaken one of the US Environmental Protection Agency's strongest tools to prod states to clear the air: the power to stop highway construction in polluted areas.
Texas officials are pushing Congress to change the Clean Air Act so that hundreds of millions of dollars in highway projects from Dallas to San Antonio could not be halted even if the EPA finds they would increase smog. Environmentalists say the lobbying campaign casts doubt on the sincerity of the state's plans and could threaten air cleanups across the country.
''There are a number of officials in Texas government who think that the way to play this game is to trash the Clean Air Act ... so they can just build highways whenever they want to,'' said Michael Replogle, transportation director at the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund.
Bush's position as front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination already has brought national media attention to Texas pollution. If elected president, Bush has promised to clean up the nation's air, but environmentalists and even some Bush admirers say he seldom stood up for the environment until recently.
This time, Texas officials say they just want flexibility to clean up the air without wrecking the economy. They say they don't need a highway freeze to motivate them to clean up Houston's air, noting that Bush and the legislature have endorsed a sharp reduction in pollution from old power plants.
''The concern is cleaning up the air. You have the regulatory pressures that can be pretty crushing at times,'' said Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. ''We are moving in the direction that we want to move in.'' Crimmins said the more drastic proposals before his agency, such as a 25 percent cut in driving in Houston, are unlikely to be adopted, but their presence on the commission's agenda underscores how seriously officials take the issue.
But environmentalists and EPA officials alike warn that without a threatened crackdown on highway construction, Texas won't have to stop the urban sprawl that increases smog by inducing people to drive more. The Texas Department of Transportation forecasts another 45 percent increase in driving statewide by 2017, on top of a 325 percent increase since 1967.
''If that law is gutted and there are no longer billions of dollars of highway dollars at stake, believe me, there will be a complete switch'' in the state's air cleanup, said Neil Carman, clean air director for the Sierra Club in Texas.
The air war in Texas has been brewing for years as cities in the eastern part of the state have mushroomed with relatively few environmental limits. While officials in states such as Massachusetts and California took steps like forcing automakers to build cleaner cars, Texas put off strong action, even scrapping a $140 million system for testing vehicle exhaust in 1995 after it had already been constructed.
This year, EPA turned up the heat, threatening in May to withhold federal highway money if the Dallas-Fort Worth area did not come up with a complete ''state implementation plan'' outlining how the area would control ozone, the main ingredient in smog.
Of greatest concern to Texas officials may be the type of penalty facing Houston, where EPA last month froze construction of new roads except those that are already funded or essential to public safety. The freeze, known as a ''conformity lapse'' to regulators, is intended to make sure that polluted cities don't undercut pollution control efforts by building more highways.
Although the Houston freeze is likely to end once the state comes up with new proposed pollution reductions, Texas officials fear it is the start of a wave of ''conformity lapses'' that could stop billions of dollars worth of highway projects for up to five years as they try to curb air pollution.
As a result, the Bush administration backs a bill that would make it harder for EPA to stop highway projects. The Texans argue that projects with completed environmental studies should be exempt from any freeze, while the current standard exempts only projects that have received funding.
But environmentalists argue that Texas is trying to open a loophole that a federal court closed this year after Atlanta abused it. Faced with a highway freeze, Atlanta regional officials rushed 130 road projects through environmental studies so that the freeze would not affect them, providing enough work to keep road crews busy for six years.
Since a Washington court of appeals shot down Atlanta's road building strategy, however, officials have poured money into mass transit projects. Texas, environmentalists say, would do well to follow Atlanta's example rather than trying to reduce environmental penalties.
