Yesterday, the California Air Resources Board showed the Valley had 45 bad ozone days for the federal standard. Today, it's 69.

There were only 65 for all of last year. So what happened?

The state is now keeping track of the new, lower threshold that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set in March. The old standard was 0.08 parts per million; the new is 0.075.

The state used the new standard to adjust totals from previous years. Now, the Web site shows a total of 111 federal violations for the Valley in 2007.

South Coast, by the way, has 77 violations this year. The region had 108 last year, according to the new standard.