Improving Air Quality

The Tulsa metropolitan area is more than 1,000,000 people in thriving communities throughout northeastern Oklahoma. Friendly communities growing with business and cultural opportunities, expansive parks and trails, economic prosperity and exemplary quality of life. And clean air meeting all national standards. In fact, our air is cleaner than it’s been in generations.

When air monitoring first started in Oklahoma in the 1980’s, Tulsa found itself on the EPA ‘dirty air list’, also called nonattainment, for the national ambient air quality standard for ozone. By 1990, air quality had improved and INCOG lead efforts for an EPA redesignation to attainment just months before congress passed the Amendments to the Clean Air Act (CAA). The amended CAA added new significant burden to areas around the country designated nonattainment, so this was especially important for the regional economic development and affordable living costs.

When just a year later air monitors began to exceed the allowable ozone standard once again, INCOG took action. In an astounding 2-week time frame in the summer of 1991, INCOG developed a regional Air Quality Committee which created and implemented the very first Ozone Alert! Program in the nation. Learn more about the Ozone Alert! Program here. INCOG has a long history of cooperatively bringing common-sense strategies and solutions to improve air quality and has actively participated with every federal ozone improvement program right up to the current Tulsa Area Ozone Advance Program Agreement.