EPA to Ban Major New Smog Sources

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that it will impose a construction ban on major new sources of pollution in 14 of the nation’s smoggiest urban areas, including eight California counties, because they will not comply with the Dec. 31 Clean Air Act standards.

The long-expected construction moratorium includes the counties of Kern, Fresno, Sacramento and Ventura, as well as the South Coast Air Basin, which covers Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

But the construction prohibition, which is scheduled to take effect early next year, is not expected to have a major impact in California.

“Because California has such strict standards already, it is unlikely that these federal sanctions will have any substantial impact on economic growth or development,” said Jananne Sharpless, secretary of the California Environmental Affairs Agency.

The ban would affect only new sources of pollution that would emit more than 100 tons of pollutants per year, a threshold that is no tougher--and in many cases far less stringent--than state and regional rules already on the books. In instances when an existing source is modified, such as an addition to an existing factory, total annual emissions can not exceed 40 tons.

Had the construction ban been in effect during the last three years, the state Air Resources Board estimated that less than half of 1% of all construction projects in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area would have been stopped.

The only projects that could conceivably be stopped, for example, would be large trash-to-energy incinerators such as Los Angeles’ all-but-abandoned Lancer incinerator, which would have spewed out 847 tons a year of nitrogen oxides, only one of several pollutants covered by the ban. A major new oil refinery would produce even more pollution. But such projects already have difficulty winning approval under existing rules of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Clean Air Act

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to impose the construction ban on any area that will fail to meet the act’s Dec. 31 deadline for complying with air quality standards for ozone and carbon monoxide.

The South Coast basin and Fresno will exceed both the federal ozone standard and carbon monoxide standards, and Kern, Sacramento and Ventura counties will fail to meet the ozone standard.

The other cities cited for ozone violations were Chicago; the Indiana suburbs of Chicago and Louisville, Ky.; East St. Louis, Ill.; Atlanta; Dallas-Fort Worth; and for carbon monoxide, Cleveland, Denver and Reno.

The announcement, made by the EPA in Washington, may have a far greater political than economic impact.

Pressure on Congress

In making the announcement, EPA Administrator Lee M. Thomas said that the Clean Air Act “leaves no discretion” in imposing the sanctions and his remark was clearly intended to step up pressure on Congress to amend the law because the EPA considers the clean air deadlines unrealistic and because the Administration is reluctant to impose economic sanctions.

Judith Ayres, Western regional administrator for the EPA, was even more direct in pointing to Congress. Ayres told The Times, “What is driving the call for sanctions is, in fact, the Clean Air Act as written and voted upon by Congress and handed to the EPA as the law of the land.”

In Washington, the Senate environmental subcommittee began hearings Monday on amendments to the Clean Air Act, including proposals to combat acid rain, toxic air pollutants and ozone and carbon monoxide pollution. The panel began focusing on provisions to extend the Dec. 31, 1987, deadlines by which nearly 70 metropolitan areas--including the South Coast Air Basin--must meet federal ozone and carbon monoxide standards.

New Controls

The legislation, which is not expected to reach the Senate until September at the earliest, would require these areas to adopt new anti-pollution controls in return for extending the deadlines and escaping federal penalties for non-compliance.

Despite tougher air pollution rules in California, eight of the 14 areas named in Monday’s EPA ban were California counties. That fact, state officials said, underscores what they called a basic inequity in the law.

The eight areas were penalized because their plans for implementing the Clean Air Act admitted that they could not meet the Dec. 31 deadline. Yet, they complained, other urban areas submitted plans that claimed they would meet the deadline when they knew they would not. But, because the federal plan was complied with on paper, no sanctions were imposed.

More Stringent Measures

S. William Becker, executive director of State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators, based in Washington, said: “We think it is absolutely inappropriate for EPA to be sanctioning areas for trying but failing to attain the standard. Many areas like L.A. have adopted control measures more stringent than any other area in the country and they’re getting sanctioned because they were honest in 1982 in acknowledging that they had a severe air quality problem.”

On the other hand, Becker said, Houston submitted a plan that claimed it would meet the deadline, but he said it is clear now that it will not.

However, the EPA said Monday that in the next several months it will audit how each state carries out its clean air plans and take action against any state that fails to carry out the plans, including any failure to impose additional air pollution controls as promised.

Ayres said the Los Angeles area has a particularly difficult time in cleaning its air. “The South Coast Air Basin is a kind of an amphitheater for ozone--12.5 million people, 10 million mobile sources, thousands of stationary sources, abundant sunshine, high temperatures, the mountains as a backdrop and onshore breezes. That is a very difficult problem,” she said.

Too Much Ozone

The ozone standard of .12 parts per million parts of air for one hour is exceeded 164 days annually in the South Coast Basin.

Becker also scored the EPA for applying sanctions but not offering solutions.

Mark Abramowitz, program director for the Santa Monica-based Coalition for Clean Air, said the EPA should step in and impose its own plan because the state air quality plan cannot meet the deadlines.

“EPA’s action is really inaction. It brings us no closer to clean air,” Abramowitz said. Times staff writer Josh Getlin contributed to this story from Washington.