Denton County was among a number of North Texas counties the Environmental Protection Agency recently labeled with “serious non-attainment” status regarding air quality.

County officials are now working to come up with a plan to get the air into compliance, and local representatives believe that goal is not that far off.

“We were 2 parts per million out of attainment,” said County Commissioner Ron Marchant, who sits on the clean air steering committee of the North Central Texas Council of Governments along with Denton Mayor Mark Burroughs.

“Because it was not as far off as it could have been, [the EPA] gives you a couple years to reach attainment,” Marchant said. The task force has come together to figure out ways to reduce the amount of ozone and other gases that pollute the air, he said.

Marchant noted that many variables, such as wind direction, can affect air quality on any given day, let alone the three-year period the counties have been given to meet the standard.

“You can’t just look at it as one county reaching attainment. So many things that affect our county we don’t generate ourselves,” he said.

Marchant said the counties — Denton, Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, Johnson, Ellis, Parker, Rockwall and Kaufmann — need to work together on solutions.

The counties had until June 15 of this year to reach attainment. With this new reclassification, the counties will have until June 15, 2013, to implement strategies to improve the air quality.

An interesting note is that if Denton County stood by itself, the air is meeting the ozone standard, said Carrie Paige, an environmental scientist with the EPA.

“Because they are part of the non-attainment area, they are still subject to the requirements,” she said.

But it is good the air quality is improving, because Denton County has an effect on the Dallas-Forth Worth area as a whole, Paige added.

“You could say Denton County is improving air quality for the entire area,” she said.

Paige speculated that more stringent requirements may be put in place, which would require more work from state officials. Those rules could target certain pollutants in the air as well as require more transportation controls. Many strategies have been in place already in many of the counties, she said.

Some of those ideas and plans of action are steered by concerns over gas and oil drilling in the region, Marchant said, and the committee wants more information from the EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

“One of the big emphases we’re placing on the two agencies is to report back to the steering committee how much of this non-attainment is due to gas and oil drilling in the western part of county,” he said.

No agency has been able to give county officials a definite answer about how many wells are in the ground, how many wells are producing gas or oil after they are drilled, and how they affect water, Marchant said.

“There are so many things there, and those two agencies cannot answer very many questions,” he said. “It’s that kind of information you need, that municipalities need to put together programs to help. You have to have the correct data to make correct decisions and that is what we’re hoping for.”

BJ LEWIS can be reached at 940-566-6875. His e-mail address is blewis@dentonrc.com .