2 Business Groups Seek to Join Suit for Clean Air

Two groups representing Ventura County business interests said Wednesday that they are trying to make their own voices heard in a lawsuit by local environmentalists calling for the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce federal clean air standards.

In an effort to soften the environmentalists’ demands, the Building Industry Assn. and the Ventura County Economic Development Assn. said they have asked the U.S. District Court for permission to intervene in the lawsuit that Citizens to Preserve the Ojai Inc. filed against the EPA earlier this year.

They called the Ojai Valley organization a “special interest group” and expressed concern that the court might order a clean-air plan without hearing from those in the community “who have broader environmental and economic interests.”

EPA’s Duty Cited

“We agree that EPA has a duty” to enforce federal clean air standards, said Ronald G. Golden, president of the Ventura County group, “but our viewpoint is vastly different . . . broader from a geographic as well as philosophic perspective,” he said.

An attorney for Citizens to Preserve the Ojai described the organizations’ attempt to intervene as “completely inappropriate.”

“I’m disgusted,” said Marc Chytilo, chief counsel for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center, which is representing the Ojai group. “Original notice of our action was filed in November of 1987, and only 13 months later they think they’ve seen enough that they should intervene.”

Chytilo said Citizens to Preserve the Ojai and the EPA are close to reaching a settlement of the suit. Intervention by the development groups would needlessly delay an agreement, he said. Chytilo also criticized Golden’s contention that the entrance of the business groups into the lawsuit would transfer control of negotiations from “one Ojai Valley-based special interest group” to the entire community.

Hearings Necessary

Before a new plan is adopted, public hearings will be held and public comment solicited, he said. “They’re not going to be excluded from the process. That’s an intentional mischaracterization, and I think they know it.”

Citizens to Preserve the Ojai filed its suit Feb. 24, seeking to force the EPA to enforce ozone standards established by the federal Clean Air Act. Ventura County’s level of ozone, a respiratory irritant and the main constituent of smog, is ranked by the EPA as the fourth-worst in the nation.

The EPA, which has the authority to impose a range of strict penalties and construction restrictions to force a cleanup, says it is unwilling to do so as long as Ventura County continues making reasonable efforts. However, Citizens to Preserve the Ojai contends that those efforts have not been made, or even planned, according to Chytilo.

Although peak levels of ozone in Ventura County have decreased from highs of 0.29 parts per million in 1973 to 0.19 at the highest point in 1987, they still exceed federal levels of 0.12 per million.

Since 1979, the number of days a year on which the federal standard was exceeded has been reduced from about 60 to 29. Similarly, first-stage ozone alerts have dropped from 25 in 1973 to none since Oct. 20, 1983, local air quality officials said.

The two business groups have requested a hearing Jan. 23 before the U.S. District Court to determine whether they will be allowed to join the suit.