EPA, Air Panel at Odds Over Ozone Rules : Local District Challenged for Weakening Controls on Emissions of Gas

Federal environmental officials are challenging a series of decisions by the South Coast Air Quality Management District to weaken regulations aimed at curbing ozone, the lung-irritating gas that is the main component of smog.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the rule changes--adopted by the air district board in the last two years--cannot be justified in an area that has the worst ozone problem in the country.

“We don’t see that kind of rollback going on, at least to that extent, anywhere else,” said Jim Breitlow, an EPA regional official in San Francisco.

Impact on Businesses

But air district officials contend that the changes were needed because most of the affected businesses found it nearly impossible to comply with the original versions of the rules, which limit vapor emissions from paints and other coatings used on homes, new cars, airplanes and various metal products.

Air district officials also say the EPA’s hard-line approach in some cases actually could worsen pollution by increasing the use of less durable coatings, which would result in more frequent repainting.

The EPA, which is legally responsible for reviewing local anti-pollution rules, has refused to incorporate the revised regulations in the State Implementation Plan, a federally mandated strategy for cleaning up smoggy parts of California.

In what EPA acknowledges is an unusual move, the federal agency has exercised its power to enforce the plan’s original rules even though district officials who adopted those requirements have wiped them off their books.

In recent months, the EPA has issued about 20 violation notices to Los Angeles-area businesses, mostly for non-compliance with the district’s original metal parts coating rule, which covers at least 900 firms that make products ranging from safety pins to office furniture. Most of these cases are unresolved, but the EPA says that three of the metal parts firms that it cited have agreed to timetables for compliance with the stricter original rule.

The rule changes have raised special concern among EPA regional officials, who have been seeking a way to avoid punishing the air district after Dec. 31, 1987, the deadline established in the Clean Air Act for compliance with the federal ozone standard.

Local, state and federal air quality officials agree that the air basin cannot come close to meeting the deadline without massive economic dislocation.

EPA officials want to keep up the pressure, but without imposing sanctions--such as a cutoff of federal sewer and highway subsidies--that the law provides.

The search for a middle ground has given rise to a “reasonable efforts” program that will allow the South Coast district to escape sanctions if it shows that it is taking all reasonable steps to fight smog. Among other things, the district will have to bring the coatings rules “up to par before we can even say they’re making reasonable efforts,” said Lucille van Ommering, coordinator of the program for the EPA.

EPA officials acknowledge that some of the South Coast’s anti-smog rules are among the toughest local rules in the country. But the “reasonable efforts” program will require the district to justify--and in some cases strengthen--its rules and enforcement procedures.

Showing ‘Intelligence’

In easing the rules, air district officials were not “dragging their feet” but rather showing “intelligence in their approach to rule-making,” said Don Roth, mayor of Anaheim and chairman of the governing board of the air district that regulates stationary pollution sources in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and part of San Bernardino counties.

“A rule doesn’t do anything unless you can . . . apply it,” Roth said.

Roth also denounced efforts by “second- and third-level bureaucrats” at EPA to enforce the original rules--a tactic that he said almost amounts to “harassment of industry.”

The inspections that led to the citations were authorized by David Howekamp, air programs chief for the EPA in San Francisco who explained that EPA is legally responsible for stepping in when air districts make unacceptable rule changes.

In leaning on the air district, the EPA is responding to outside pressure. The federal agency was taken to court in 1984 by environmentalists who accused EPA of neglecting its responsibility to ride herd on the South Coast district.

In a settlement reached last September with Mark Abramowitz, the official of Citizens for a Better Environment who filed the action, EPA officials promised to make the air district take all “available and technologically feasible” steps to reduce smog. The settlement also committed the EPA to the “reasonable efforts” program.

The subject of all this debate is ozone, an invisible gas that damages lung tissue and can aggravate respiratory ailments such as asthma and bronchitis. A recent study by researchers at UCLA found that mice exposed to high ozone levels had an abnormally high rate of lung cancer. But there is no evidence linking ozone to human cancer, and the effects of chronic exposure are unknown.

Although peak smog levels have dropped in recent years because of pollution control rules, the South Coast basin in 1985 still exceeded the federal ozone standard on about 160 days--more than anywhere else in the country.

Ozone is formed when reactive organic gases--known as ROGs in agency jargon--from vehicle tailpipes and stationary pollution sources mix with other contaminants in strong sunlight. It is an especially nagging problem in the South Coast because of weather patterns and an abundance of polluting emissions.

Source of Gas Emissions

Solvent vapors from paints and other surface coatings are a major source of area reactive gas emissions, contributing about 13% of the total and more than 25% of the total emitted by stationary sources.

The district’s recent coatings rule changes are expected at least to delay reactive gas reductions of about 20 tons per day, according to interviews with district officials and figures in air district reports.

This impressive-sounding total actually is but a fraction of the roughly 1,000 tons of reactive gases spewed daily into South Coast air. To put a 20-ton reduction in perspective, reactive gas emissions would have to fall to about 225 tons per day for the ozone standard to be met, the air district estimates.

Given the fairly modest reductions at stake, the flap with EPA is “a quibble if you like, (but) not even a squabble,” observed Tom Heinsheimer, vice chairman of the air district board. Both agencies are “pushing in the same direction,” he said.

But Breitlow, regional chief of state implementation plans for the EPA, said the South Coast should be doing “everything that’s within grasp” to fight ozone. “They’ve got things that can be complied with that they’re rolling back,” he said. “It simply doesn’t seem to make sense.”

The dispute involves a highly technical debate over the ability of coatings manufacturers and users to comply with the district’s original “technology-forcing” rules--so-called because compliance would depend on development of less-polluting coatings or application techniques than existed when the rules were adopted. The rules set up a series of deadlines for gradually reducing vapor emissions from each coating.

During the last two years, as several deadlines for meeting the final emission limits have approached, the district board has voted either to extend the deadlines for up to four years or to eliminate the final limits entirely in favor of “demonstration programs.” Such programs require businesses to experiment with coatings and coating techniques and to report the results, which are then used to set new final limits.

In December, 1983, for example, the board substituted a demonstration program for final limits in its metal parts rule when many firms complained that meeting the final limits would be impossible or prohibitively expensive.

Ron Joseph, a coatings consultant who sat on an industry committee that advised the district, said many firms would have faced the prospect of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to install equipment to burn solvent fumes because low-solvent coatings were not available. He said the cost of such control equipment was beyond the reach of many small and mid-size firms.

In another revision in March, 1984, the board wiped out the final limits for auto assembly coating. The change was made after General Motors and Toyota--the only two companies affected--said that to remain competitive they had to use a paint system that would make compliance with the original rule impossible.

The EPA has contended that such changes were not justified or gave affected businesses longer extensions than they needed.

Other critics, including air district board member Sabrina Schiller--who is also an official of the Coalition for Clean Air environmental group--have complained that deadline extensions are unfair to firms that took the deadlines seriously and managed to comply.

Demonstration Programs Hit

The EPA has also criticized the district’s reliance on demonstration programs, saying that some firms do not want to show good results when the effect will be tougher final limits.

Larry Bowen, chief of rule development for the air district, said this criticism erroneously assumes that businesses in the district are not “concerned about air quality and how to improve it.”

Bowen also said the EPA approach “doesn’t necessarily fit with what the real-world situation is.” Bowen said technology-forcing rules, by their nature, may need revision, but that EPA is saying, “ ‘You committed to it. Since you committed to it, the reduction has to be achieved.’ ”

Air district officials also contend that the EPA approach could actually worsen pollution, which is why the board decided last August, over EPA objections, to extend until 1989 final solvent limits for some types of house paints.

While acknowledging that paints that met the limits were on the market, a majority of the board agreed with industry officials that the low-solvent paints do not last as long under some use conditions.

If you “have to paint twice as often, you’re certainly not doing any good for the environment,” Heinsheimer said. The EPA had said there was no evidence “to support the theoretical belief” that more frequent painting would result.

EPA and environmental critics believe the board actions reflect a sense of fatalism about the smog problem and too strong a reluctance to call for sacrifice by business or the public to clean up the air.

As an example, they cite the board’s rejection last October of a ride-sharing initiative that was backed by many business groups and local governments, as well as by environmentalists.

The measure would have required businesses and government agencies with more than 700 employees to encourage ride-sharing by offering workers parking subsidies or similar incentives to come to work in car-pools or by bus. District staff members estimated that the rule would cut tailpipe emissions by at least 80 tons per day.

In testimony supporting the proposal, the EPA’s Howekamp stressed the agency’s “concern over the recision or relaxation of certain district rules, most notably in the category of surface coatings.” The ride-sharing proposal, Howekamp said, was a good alternative way to cut emissions.

The board killed the measure by a vote of 8 to 5.

Board chairman Roth, one of those voting no, said in a recent interview that the plan put “the nose under the tent” for mandatory ride-sharing in the future.

During the next several months, EPA and air district officials will be comparing district rules with those in other localities that also seek to control major emitters of reactive organic gases, such as auto refinishing, metal degreasing and fuel storage operations. If stronger local rules are found in California or other states, the South Coast will be expected to adopt them or justify their rejection.

Another element of the program will involve an audit of South Coast’s enforcement activities and a search for ways to strengthen them.

Bowen said district staff members will be open to suggestions for rule improvements. But he said the district will “want to be sure that what we do is reasonable and would result in an air quality benefit.”

The EPA has not been shy in the past about using sanctions to spur the fight against smog. In late 1980, the agency imposed a partial freeze on federal sewer and highway construction grants because of the Legislature’s refusal to pass a vehicle inspection program for the smoggiest areas of the state. The freeze was lifted in 1982 after lawmakers passed a bill to launch the smog check program in the South Coast and Bay Area and in San Diego, Ventura, Fresno, Sacramento, and Kern counties.

The South Coast is one of about 30 U.S. metropolitan areas that are expected to miss the 1987 ozone deadline. EPA regional officials said the reasonable efforts program may serve as the national model for dealing with the other smog-bound areas.

The South Coast also will be far from attaining the federal carbon monoxide standard by 1987. However, carbon monoxide comes almost entirely from tailpipe emissions, which the air district has no direct power to regulate. (Air district lawyers had said the ride-sharing measure, which did not directly regulate tailpipe emissions, was one the district had the power to adopt.)

Accordingly, the EPA and state Air Resources Board--which is responsible for regulating vehicle pollution--will negotiate another phase of “reasonable efforts” aimed at carbon monoxide and other tailpipe emissions. Last October, the ARB adopted a goal of cutting vehicle pollution another 25 percent by the year 2,000, according to ARB spokesman Bill Sessa. The ARB and EPA must work out specific measures to implement the goal. WHERE ORGANIC GASES COME FROM About 1,000 tons of reactive organic gases are emitted each day in the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The chart below shows the major sources of these gases, which contribute to smog. 48% Automobiles and Other Vehicles 13% Surface Coatings 13% Misc* 13% Other Solvent Uses 9% Petroleum Production & Refining 4% Petroluem Marketing *Includes emissions from construction, demolition, pesticide use and landfill emissions. Source: South Coast Air Quality Management District