Air District to File Civil Suit Over Odors at GM Plant

General Motors, charged by city prosecutors with criminal violations of air pollution rules at its Van Nuys auto assembly plant, also will be accused in a separate civil suit of dozens of odor violations at the plant, officials said Friday.

South Coast Air Quality Management District officials said the suit, seeking fines for 45 odor citations at the Van Nuys plant over the past year, will be filed within the next few days to beat a one-year deadline for acting on the alleged violations, the first of which occurred Aug. 28, 1985.

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office Thursday filed seven misdemeanor charges against General Motors and three officials at its Van Nuys plant for alleged violations of air district rules last August and September. But prosecutors announced that they would not file charges relating to the many odor citations referred to them by air district officials.

The first odor cases were referred to prosecutors last October.

‘A Little Bit Surprised’

Air district spokesman Ron Ketcham said district officials were “annoyed” and “a little bit surprised” that the city attorney declined to prosecute those cases, adding: “If they were going to make that decision, they should have done it some time ago, because we’re running smack dab into a statute of limitations.”

Ketcham said the civil suit, which will be filed in Superior Court, will center on the 31 odor citations referred to the city attorney between October and March, as well as 14 other alleged odor violations cited since then by air district inspectors.

Penalties of up to $1,000 could be imposed for each of the first dozen alleged violations, which occurred before the air district ordered GM to abate the odor. The 33 citations since the abatement order are punishable by fines of up to $6,000 each, Ketcham said.

Deputy City Atty. Gwendolyn Irby said prosecutors decided not to file charges relating to the odor citations because the odors are an ongoing problem that can best be solved by air district action.

As for the months it took to reach this decision, Irby said the case required “extensive review and consideration.”

GM Reacts

Not surprisingly, the city attorney’s action drew fire Friday from GM officials.

A GM spokesman in Detroit said the company would “definitely” fight the criminal charges, which he called “a stark contrast to the cooperative efforts we’ve initiated.”

Dee Allen, director of media relations for GM’s Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada Group, of which the Van Nuys plant is a part, said the company is “especially shocked” by the charges against individual plant officials, who had made “a superhuman effort to address the community’s environmental concerns out there.”

Allen declined to address the specific charges, however, saying company officials had not had a chance to study them.

The criminal charges and the odor complaints stem from GM’s conversion last year to a new auto-painting process known as “base coat/clear coat,” which imparts a lustrous shine but is smellier than other painting methods.

The smell last August prompted bitter complaints from some residents of a neighborhood on the northern boundary of the sprawling plant, who said the odor at times made them sick.

Air district officials issued numerous odor citations, and found a few other purported violations while responding to complaints about odors.

Those other alleged violations were the subject of the city attorney’s seven-count criminal complaint.

Four counts accuse GM and its plant manager, Ernie D. Schaefer, of violating, on four days, air district rules that limit emissions of paint vapors that contribute to formation of ozone, the lung-irritating gas that is the major component of smog.

GM and Schaefer are also accused of two violations of rules limiting the density and duration of visible smoke.

The seventh count--filed against GM, Schaefer, plant engineering director Dennis Heinemann and environmental engineer Larry Breeding--alleges that the auto-painting was done on a day last August when a key pollution-control device was out of service.

Each count is punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Efforts Listed

GM officials say they have spent more than $17 million since last August to control paint odors. The company is still working on the problem through changes in equipment and the chemistry of its paints, they say.

Air district officials say that, although GM has made great progress, the district nonetheless issued 14 odor citations between March and the beginning of July.

Since then, Ketcham said, “we’ve been pretty satisfied with the way things are going.”

The Van Nuys plant, at 8000 Van Nuys Blvd., makes Camaros and Firebirds. Almost 2,200 of the plant’s 5,000 workers have been laid off indefinitely because of slow sales of those models.