As noted previously, Caroline and Stafford Counties failed to meet the EPA’s new ozone quality standards but Spotsylvania County and Fredericksburg didn’t. Care to guess why?
It’s because Spotsylvania County and Fredericksburg don’t have any ozone monitors!
In fact, there are only 26 ozone monitors in 21 different jurisdictions in all of Virginia:
It’s amazing that the AP and the Richmond Times-Dispatch actually published a news story when the whole basis of the story is government data whose methodology is so flawed it would be laughed at by anyone doing scholarly research. They only have data for 21 jurisdictions (out of 134 jurisdictions [95 counties and 39 independent cities]) but that doesn’t stop them from writing a story about the terrible ozone in the 14 jurisdictions (out of the 21 jurisdictions that have monitors) that failed to meet the EPA’s standards!
Thanks to commenter Larry Gross on Fred2Blue blog for pointing this out.