Today (Thursday) is national Dump the Pump Day, and the ozone season has started – the first few ozone watch days of the year were issued by the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization last week.

Capital Metro is urging Austinites to leave their cars at home by offering coupons for a free ride, good today only. Print out the coupon from www.capmetro.org and present to your bus operator or MetroRail fare enforcement officer.

If you’re really motivated, submit a video documenting your attempts not to pollute to CAMPO’s Hero Chronicles contest at www.ozoneheroes.com. The creator of the winning video will receive a bicycle from AJ’s Cyclery; second place gets six months of MetroPlus passes from Cap Metro.

Preventing Austin from receiving sanctions from the Environmental Protection Agency will be harder than ever this year: The feds recently tightened the allowable ozone count levels, and Austin has barely made the cut in previous summers. Failure to do so (called “nonattainment”) can result in, among other penalties, metro areas being forced to obtain federal approval for transportation projects.

This article appears in June 18 • 2010.

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