Leaders Voice Concern Over Clean Air Plan

Los Angeles business and transportation leaders expressed concern Thursday at the speed with which air quality officials plan to implement a clean air strategy and warned of a possible backlash.

They compared the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s actions with “religious fervor” and marching in “lock-step” toward costly and unbeneficial air pollution controls. The criticism marked one of the first public challenges by business leaders to the AQMD’s new fast-track approach.

Ride-Sharing Program

Since December, the district has launched a new ride-sharing program that will affect employers of 1.4 million workers in the four-county South Coast Air Basin; started a five-year “clean-fuels” program that will require that all transit buses, rental cars and other fleet vehicles purchased after 1993 run on electricity or cleaner-burning fuels; resumed the ticketing of drivers of excessively smoking cars, buses and trucks, and is threatening to go to court to force the state to add a bus- and car-pool lane to the Ventura Freeway.

Now the district is preparing an updated strategy with the goal of cleaning the basin’s skies within 20 years. The strategy, scheduled to take effect in September, is expected to call for tougher controls of emissions of all kinds. Business and industrial polluters are particularly alarmed that the plan will require them to add costly new controls on emissions of oxides of nitrogen. The oxides are among the key ingredients of photochemical smog, acid fog, nitrogen dioxide and microscopic particles that can cause respiratory illnesses.

Approach Challenged

But in remarks before 150 business leaders at a daylong clean air conference at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, two speakers challenged the smog district’s approach and warned that the AQMD could be setting itself up for a public backlash not seen since former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s proposal in 1976 to convert lanes on the Santa Monica Freeway for the exclusive use of buses and car pools.

James Sims, director of fiscal analysis for the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, said: “Let’s remember that when we institute new public policies . . . we have to retain and maintain public support. . . . We can’t afford another Santa Monica diamond lane (controversy). We can’t afford another 12-year setback because we moved forward too fast.”

In an interview, Michael Hertel, environmental manager of Southern California Edison Co., said he was concerned that the district may be isolating itself politically. He said that AQMD executive officer James M. Lents “has a tight focus” on air quality. “I hope it won’t blind him to the need to assess what the facts are before he moves ahead. I’d hate to see us repeat a ‘diamond lane’ experience on a larger scale,” he said.

Lents said Thursday that he was not unmindful of the possible political repercussions. “We’ve got to be careful. We’re trying to be. But I don’t think we can abdicate our responsibility in pointing the way to cleaner air,” he said.

During the last three months, Lents’ statements that the district intends to take a far more aggressive stance in regulating air pollution has alarmed some members of the state Legislature as well as business interests. Lents, for example, has depicted business and industry as willing to “go out of their way to defeat you” and said that “well-meaning elected officials” can shrink from standing up for clean air by supporting the diamond lane because they fear it would cost them votes.

Recently, one of the legislators who opposes a Ventura Freeway diamond lane, Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia), called for legislation to reorganize the district’s governing board because of the AQMD’s position on the issue. Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) likened the district to “a rogue elephant” and introduced a bill that would require the state to review all regulations proposed by the district before they take effect.

Sen. Ralph Dills (D-Gardena) convened a Senate committee hearing specifically to question the district’s plans to ban big trucks from freeways during rush hours even before the district has formulated a plan under authority granted by the Legislature last year.

Mark Abramowitz of the Santa Monica-based Coalition for Clean Air said he believes the public’s favorable mood on environmental issues would succeed in turning back any efforts in the Legislature to weaken the district’s authority.

Still, Gladys Meade of the American Lung Assn. of California said that she advised district officials not to sue for a diamond lane on the Ventura Freeway, even though she said it would help clean the air.

“There is too much to lose,” she said.

Sims said that in some cases diamond lanes have reduced congestion and encouraged the formation of car pools. But he questioned whether there was an air quality benefit. It is possible, he said, that at the end of a diamond lane, when the pool cars merge into regular traffic lanes, congestion could be worsened, slowing all cars and increasing emissions.

Sims also took on one of the district’s principal goals--the switch to cleaner-burning alternative fuels such as methanol or electricity.

“There’s a lot of religious fervor out there about alternative fuels,” he began. And he took aim at advocates of such fuels. “There’s always a paradise at the end. Secondly, they say you can’t be swayed by ‘doubting Thomases,’ and third, theirs is the only way. This religious fervor is primarily connected with methanol,” he said.

Hertel was especially critical of a letter from the district staff that explained that the purpose of public meetings on the plan was not for the public to assess its contents but to enlist their support. “I think that’s not the right way to go,” Hertel said.

“We want to help,” Hertel said. “. . . Our concern is that if the district tries to do things that are not beneficial to air quality and are very costly, our customers are going to pay an unnecessary expense. That’s wrong. I don’t fault the district for being as aggressive as they’re being. That’s good. They have got to get people to understand, and one of the ways to do that is with strong public statements. We’re arguing more at what it is they want to do and at what pace and trying to get them to let all of us participate in crafting that plan,” Hertel said.

Hertel suggested delaying the scheduled September adoption of the plan for nine to 18 months. “That’s too long,” Lents said. But he said it is possible that a modest time extension beyond the September deadline for adopting the plan might be required. The plan’s adoption is now a year behind schedule.