Clean-Air Crunch

Southern California’s balmy climate and bustling economy have conspired to lure enough people to the region to fill in most of its wide-open spaces, in the air as well as on the land.

So far the land is bearing up reasonably well. The air is not. There was an unhealthful amount of ozone in Southern California’s air on 180 days last year. Houston and New York City are not even close seconds at 20 days a year. It is the only area in the nation that still fails to meet health standards on nitrogen oxides, which are byproducts of burning fuels in anything from cars to power mowers. Last year the number of bad ozone days climbed again after several years of falling. All this remains the case nearly 20 years after scientists persuaded Congress to pass the Clean Air Act because living in dirty air is bad for people.

There is more to come. There will be nearly half again as many cars in the Los Angeles air basin 20 years from now. Population will increase from its present 13 million to 18 million. In the natural course of events the air will get dirtier with each new car and each new power mower.

A month from today the South Coast Air Quality Management District--the lead smog agency for Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties--will vote on a plan to change the natural course of events. The plan is the most comprehensive anti-pollution program ever drafted anywhere in the world. Despite its scope, a vote to put the plan into effect would mean changing the habits of many Southern Californians but not fundamentally changing the way they live.

Still, there is a natural resistance to change. Some of plan’s proposals would take effect rather suddenly, even though it would be 17 years before the air was as clean as it must be. Under the circumstances the smog agency would have a better chance of making the plan work if business was solidly behind the program instead of sniping at it--often with half-truths.

For example, the formal comment on the plan by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce says that it “will cost jobs.” It also says that anything that would drive business out of the basin must be examined “with gravest concern.” Other critics put the job loss at 50,000.

The job-loss figure is half-fact. The Southern California Assn. of Governments estimates that the region will create 1.4 million new jobs during the 20 years after the clean-air plan takes hold. By one estimate, the number of new jobs might be 50,000 higher if business did not have to contend with new pollution controls. It can easily be argued that without new controls the number of new jobs would fall well short of 1.4 million because companies would look elsewhere for cleaner air. As The Times reported on Thursday, one-third of Southern California’s executive recruiters say that smog already is a major factor when candidates pass up jobs in the basin.

Trying to crush the district plan, Southern California Edison Co. promotes an alternative in which trapping hydrocarbons and other organic gases from escaping into the air would be emphasized over controls on nitrogen oxides. Smog is created when sunlight cooks an airborne mixture of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons.

Edison says that its plan would get rid of ozone faster and at less cost, which may or may not be half-true--depending on which air chemist you consult. In any event the plan would meet health standards only for ozone, not for nitrogen oxides or soot and other particulates. Thus the Edison plan would not meet federal clean-air standards.

Edison cites the high cost of trapping nitrogen oxides at its power plants as one reason for adopting its alternative. But manufacturers of such controls told district officials recently that the utility estimate of the cost of controls is four times the actual cost and that prices for controls are still falling. The inflated figure just intensifies questions about the rest of its plan.

Opponents of the smog agency’s plan have been acting as though Southern California faced a choice only between the official plan and the Edison substitute. In fact, there is a third--far worse--option. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to impose its own plan to clean up the air in 1990 if Southern California’s smog agency hesitates to start along a path that will meet federal air-quality standards; the agency made the promise to settle a suit brought by the Sierra Club and the Coalition for Clean Air. The federal government has no authority to intervene in some areas reserved to local law, so it could not use land-use planning and some other devices that the air-quality district intends to use. To make up for that, federal controls on sources over which Washington does have authority would need to be far more severe than what the smog district has in mind. Southern California might be able to live with a federal plan, but should not bet its future on it. It can avoid the gamble if business leaders will face up to the fact that the air district’s plan is the best that they can get and start supporting it.