HOUSTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday granted Gov. Rick Perry’s request to classify the Houston area’s smog problem as “severe,” giving the region an extra nine years to meet federal health standards.

AP

The eight-county Houston region, whose smog problem used to be classified as “moderate,” now joins Los Angeles as the only two places in the nation with a severe smog problem, according to the EPA.

The Houston area now has until June 2019, instead of 2010, to meet federal air quality standards. The extension, however, is for Houston to meet the 1997 standard on ozone limits.

The EPA no longer considers the 1997 standard safe for public health, but agency spokeswoman Catherine Milbourn said Thursday that progress toward that standard will protect the public and bring regions closer to meeting more stringent requirements.

Milbourn said the EPA reviews standards regularly, so it’s not unusual for regions to be working to meet more than one standard at a time. The EPA is required to evaluate progress on the 2008 standard in March 2010, Milbourn said.

“In the meantime, we expect states to continue to work toward meeting the 1997 standards,” she said.

Clean air advocates were skeptical.

“What are we doing here?” said Matthew Tejada, executive

director of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention, in a story for Thursday editions of the Houston Chronicle. “We’ve just done a bureaucratic dance, and we’re not any closer to clean air.”

Perry requested the extension last year, surprising some local officials because he asked for a double bump in classification from moderate to severe, skipping over serious, which required compliance by 2013.

The move was praised by the Greater Houston Partnership, a business association that expressed confidence in the region’s ability to meet the 2019 target for air quality.

“The partnership believes that improvement in air quality is important in order to maintain a robust, viable economic climate and to improve public health in the region,” spokeswoman Christina Garza said.