2 Industry Smog Plans Won’t Work, AQMD Says

Regional air quality officials, stepping up their drive for quick approval of their own clean air plan, disclosed Friday that a new analysis shows that the South Coast Air Basin would never meet federal clean air standards under two controversial alternatives proposed by industry.

Officials of the South Coast Air Quality Management District said that claims by Southern California Edison Co. and the Western States Petroleum Assn. that their less-costly alternatives would bring the nation’s smoggiest urban area into compliance with the federal ozone standard are based on questionable assumptions and in many cases are undocumented.

Would Not Work

“They would never meet the standards,” AQMD Executive Officer James M. Lents said.

“We went line by line, assumption for assumption, measure by measure . . . and found a number of points where the facts simply did not support the conclusions they reached,” said Pat Nemeth, AQMD deputy executive officer for planning and rules.

It was the first time that the district had publicly stated that the Edison and Western States Petroleum plans would fail to meet the federal ozone standard, which is 0.12 parts per million. The district has previously said that the indus try plans would fail to meet federal standards for nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter.

The district’s analysis was quickly disputed by both Edison and Western States Petroleum. They repeated earlier arguments that their proposals would not only clean up the air basin 10 years sooner than the AQMD but at far less cost.

The AQMD’s analysis, released at a press conference at district headquarters in El Monte, comes just three weeks before a scheduled showdown vote March 17 on a far-reaching clean air plan to bring Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties into compliance with federal clean air standards by the year 2007.

The AQMD’s proposal is roundly opposed by business and industry as too costly. Business interests have warned that the plan would cost tens of thousands of lost jobs, a charge denied Friday by the district.

The AQMD’s plan was originally scheduled for a vote last December. But the vote was delayed after legal problems with the plan’s environmental impact report were discovered. Since then, the district has reviewed its plan, as well as those offered by industry.

It was clear Friday that the AQMD staff had not retreated, and Lents said he is now convinced that there are enough votes on the board to approve it.

“I think the case is strengthened, not weakened,” Lents said. “We are calling for action now.”

The AQMD said Friday that its plan would cost $2.79 billion a year, compared to $1.59 billion annually under the Edison plan and $1.63 billion under the Western States Petroleum plan. The costs are for air pollution control measures proposed only in the first five years under what the district calls Tier I of its control measures. The costs do not include between $37 billion and $40 billion in new freeways and mass transit systems that would largely be built even without an air quality plan but are nonetheless a factor in meeting clean air standards.

AQMD officials said the industry contention that their plans would meet the ozone standard were based on the incorrect assumption that each air pollution control measure they endorsed would result in greater emission reductions than the district thought likely.

District officials also said a new analysis of recent data disproves Edison’s claim that the federal standard for microscopic particulate matter, known as PM10, could be met with fewer controls. Neither industry plan would meet the standard for oxides of nitrogen, one of the key ingredients of photochemical smog, the district argued.

Fine particulate matter is largely responsible for poor visibility and appears as the brown haze often seen in the basin. Particulate matter can also bypass the human body’s defenses and lodge deeply in lungs and cause respiratory illness.

Ozone, which accounts for about 95% of photochemical smog, has been shown to reduce lung capacity, causes coughing, burning of the eyes, impedes the body’s immune system, results in reduced lung capacity and damages trees, crops, and buildings.

The AQMD’s conclusion that the Edison plan failed to meet the ozone standard “is not based on Edison’s latest submittal to the district in January, 1989,” Edison said in a statement.

The company also said its PM10 proposal “is consistent with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.” Both Edison responses, offered by Nader Mansour, the firm’s environmental regulations manager, were disputed by Nemeth.

Michael Wang, manager of operating and environmental issues for Western States Petroleum, said, “I don’t feel that their analysis is reflective of our plan. I don’t know how they’re running the model . . . but we have double- and triple-checked our runs.”