Watchdog Group Flunks 9 of 14 Air Monitors

An environmental group has issued a report card to the governing board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, handing out mainly failing grades.

The Coalition for Clean Air, a Santa Monica-based group that monitors activities of the four-county air district, gave flunking scores to nine of 14 district board members, based on an analysis of key votes during the last two years.

Don Roth, chairman of the board and mayor of Anaheim, got a low score of 30 by casting “three votes in support of clean air goals” of the 10 votes considered, the coalition said.

Tom Heinsheimer, a Rolling Hills councilman and vice chairman of the board, received a score of 40.

William Smiland, an attorney and Gov. George Deukmejian’s appointee to the board, scored a zero for voting against the coalition’s position on all 10 issues.

Six other board members got scores of under 50, which the coalition designated as the lowest passing score.

“Southern California is not attaining air quality standards that have been set by the federal government,” said Kelly Hayes-Raitt, executive director of the coalition. District board members “are the people empowered with cleaning up our air. . . . Unfortunately, they are not doing everything in their power” to achieve that goal, the director said.

Heinsheimer called the report card “an exercise in puffery and self-aggrandizement,” saying the coalition’s time “would be better spent trying to work cooperatively with the hard-working members of the board who are trying to clean up the air.”

Heinsheimer also accused the coalition of advocating “very extreme positions which would cause very serious and unacceptable economic impacts” in greater Los Angeles.

Roth noted that the South Coast district is widely viewed as having the toughest emission controls in the country. “We set the pace,” he said.

Roth, a Republican, also dismissed the report as “political mischief,” pointing out that a Deukmejian appointee got the lowest score.

Hayes-Raitt denied any political motivation, however. She said the report’s “facts and figures speak for themselves.”

Others with low scores were Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum and his alternate Reine Corbeil, with a 20 rating based on two “good” votes; Faye Myers Dastrup, mayor of Ontario, a score of 30, and Orange County Supervisors Bruce Nestande and Harriett Wieder and their alternates, scores of 40.

3 Score 90

Three board members scored 90, including Larry Berg, a USC political science professor; Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude and his alternates, and Sabrina Schiller, the Senate Rules Committee appointee to the board who also is project coordinator with the coalition.

Passing grades were also given to Riverside County Supervisor Norton Younglove and his alternate, a 70, and to Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman and his alternate Norman Zafman--who scored 60 based on six “good” votes, one “bad” vote and three absences.

The 10 votes analyzed involved such issues as emissions from oil refineries and glass furnaces, control of gas emissions from landfills, reduction of vehicle traffic through ride-sharing incentives, and protections against declining air quality in areas that now meet some clean air standards.

The South Coast district, based in El Monte, regulates stationary sources of pollution in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and a portion of San Bernardino counties. Regulation of tailpipe emissions from cars and other vehicles rests with the California Air Resources Board.

The South Coast district is likely to meet the federal health standard for nitrogen dioxide pollution by some time in 1988, thanks to controls on vehicles and industry. But the area routinely violates federal ozone and carbon monoxide standards and won’t attain them for many years, according to air district officials.