Vote on Wide-Ranging Pollution Controls Set : Air Quality Officials to Decide Today on Plan to Clean Up Southland Skies Within 20 Years

A ban on bias-ply tires for passenger cars.

No more idling in the drive-through lane at McDonald’s.

New chemical formulas for underarm deodorants.

Electric trolleys instead of diesel buses.

These are among more than 120 new air pollution control rules that could be adopted within the next five years if regional air quality officials vote today as expected for a far-reaching strategy to meet federal clean air standards within 20 years.

Fight Against Pollution

For 43 years, the fight against air pollution in Southern California was waged at oil refineries and power plants, or under the hood of the family car.

But as the South Coast Air Quality Management District confronts anew the seemingly overwhelming task of reclaiming blue skies, the battle against air pollution has been brought to the medicine chests, garages, back yard patios and kitchen sinks of virtually every man, woman and child living in the four-county South Coast Air Basin.

“This is a historic turning point that puts us on the verge of a new era in environmental protection and life style,” AQMD Executive Officer James M. Lents said.

Known as the Air Quality Management Plan, or AQMP, the clean air strategy which has been five years in the making faces its critical showdown vote at 9:30 a.m. today in the Carson Community Center during a joint hearing of the air quality district’s governing board and the Executive Committee of the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

If the AQMP is adopted today, it must next be approved by the state Air Resources Board and the Environmental Protection Agency. Moreover, each of the 120 regulations proposed in the plan must be individually approved and put into effect after public hearings that are sure to draw opponents.

The vote comes amid growing controversy over how the nation’s smoggiest urban area is to meet clean air standards, and warnings by the EPA that it will impose its own plan on the basin if local efforts falter.

Never has such an ambitious and politically volatile proposal been advanced in the decades-long quest for clean air. And never have individual residents faced unprecedented proposals that will affect where they live, how they get to work, even the household products they use.

The payoff, the air quality district says, will be clear skies within 10 years and 60 miles of average visibility, compared to 10 miles today. Within 20 years, the district says, every noxious air pollutant that daily endangers human health, damages property or stains the skies will be within limits allowed by the federal Clean Air Act.

If all rules were implemented, emissions of hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen--the major ingredients of photochemical smog--would be reduced by 84% and 80%, respectively. Poisonous carbon monoxide would be cut by 96% from today’s levels, sulfur dioxide would be slashed by 79% and microscopic particulate matter would be cut by more than half.

The AQMP has sparked heated opposition from some cities, principally in Orange County, as well as from business and industry that have warned of many thousands of lost jobs and billions of dollars in hidden costs.

Other local officials, as well as clean air activists, have hailed the plan as Southern California’s best hope for clean air, and with it a healthier population and economy.

What happens here is being closely watched across the nation by business and industry and by pollution-shrouded cities everywhere trying to cope with the confluence of two great currents in modern urban life--economic growth and environmental limits.

Developments here are also expected to have an impact in Washington, where Congress and the Bush Administration are hammering out major amendments to the federal Clean Air Act.

Clearing Southern California’s air of smog is a formidable task.

Faced with projections of a 37% population increase over the next 20 years as well as the drumbeat of opposition from various interests, it will be difficult just to maintain the gains in air quality already achieved.

More people mean more industry, jobs, motor vehicles, all of which add to the air pollution burden.

The South Coast Air Basin sprawls over 13,350 square miles of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Health-threatening ozone concentrations are often three times higher than the federal clean air standard. Last year, ozone readings exceeded the federal clean air standard (.12 parts per million for one hour) on 176 days.

The basin today has the dubious distinction of being the only area in the country that still fails to meet federal limits on nitrogen dioxide, another bothersome pollutant.

All of this portends the need for far-reaching air pollution control strategies that go beyond traditional approaches.

At issue in today’s scheduled vote is whether residents and businesses in the basin will submit to unprecedented controls--controls that some may see as intrusions on their life styles--for the cause of clean air.

Here is a sampling.

The AQMP envisions prohibitions on the sales of new barbecues that require starter fluid. Motorists buying new tires would be required to purchase radial tires that get better mileage. Bias-ply tires would be banned.

Even underarm deodorants--whether applied as aerosol sprays, roll-ons, pumps, pads, creams and squeeze bottles--would have to be reformulated to eliminate reactive organic compounds that help form smog. Foam products such as drinking cups would have to be manufactured in a way that limited emissions of smog-producing hydrocarbons.

Lawn and garden equipment such as mowers and leaf blowers would have to be electric or powered by engines using cleaner fuel.

One proposal calls for limits on drive-through restaurants to hold down emissions while customers wait for their orders.

There is even a proposal to limit how many family cars can be registered in the basin, and one to charge higher registration fees to motorists who own more than one car.

That such potentially controversial rules are being proposed is dramatic evidence that the basin’s smog problem is so intractable that virtually nothing can be overlooked if clean air standards are to be met.

Dramatic as these rules affecting individuals may seem, they account for only a small percentage of the total emission reductions that would be achieved under the plan.

Most of the new controls hit business and motor vehicles the hardest.

There would be a more stringent smog check vehicle inspection and maintenance program, including new emission limits on diesel trucks and buses.

Government agencies and businesses with fleets of 15 vehicles or more, including rental car agencies, could be required to switch to cleaner-burning fuels beginning in 1992 or when vehicles become available. The goal is to have 15% to 30% of fleet vehicles operating on clean fuels by the year 2000.

By the end of 1998, the district proposes that 40% of all cars and light and medium duty trucks, 70% of all commercial freight trucks and 100% of all buses run on alternative fuels.

Southern California Edison Co. and the Western States Petroleum Assn., which represents 66 oil companies, have each advanced competing plans that will minimize their costs of compliance.

Industry Alternatives

They argue that their alternatives not only cost less, but enable the basin to meet the ozone standard 10 years sooner than the district’s plan. The district heatedly disputes the industry’s contention.

The district estimates the annual cost of its program at $3.9 billion annually. But an industry-sponsored study by National Economic Research Associates Inc. put the cost at $12.8 billion per year. If that figure is accurate, the average household would pay an added $2,200 a year in the cost of goods and services.

How the plan would affect jobs is in dispute, and estimates vary widely. An industry-sponsored study warned that 52,500 fewer jobs would be created by the year 2010 if the air quality plan is carried out. A study by USC and funded by the air quality district said 31,700 fewer jobs would be created. But the district argues that passage of the plan, in fact, would create 80,000 more jobs.

Lents argued that even if the industry figures are correct, the slower job-growth figures amount to less than 2% of all new jobs expected by the year 2010.

The fight to overcome Southern California’s smog problem has always been uphill, one marked by years of sometimes successful but often faltering attempts.

Indeed, the region has twice missed federal clear air deadlines to rid its skies of health threatening levels of carbon monoxide and ozone, which is the principal air pollutant of concern that can affect the health of even healthy individuals, impede breathing and damage crops, forests and property.

But there has been progress. Lead has been all but removed from the atmosphere by the introduction of unleaded gasoline and the reformulation of products such as paint.

There has been a steady decline in both the severity and number of days that ozone concentrations exceed the federal standard. In 1988, there was only one Stage II smog alert, signaling “very unhealthful” air. There were 23 in 1978. The federal sulfur dioxide standard has been met.

Whether residents 20 years from now will be able to look back and talk about 1989 as the year the tide turned in the battle against air pollution remains to be seen.

“We are the determiners of our own future,” Lents said in an interview. “We’ve laid out our battle plans for hitting the beaches at Normandy. We’ve still got to hit the beaches.”

BREATHING EASIER?

The Pollutants

Ozone

Origin: The major ingredient of photochemical smog is created when oxides of nitrogen and reactive organic gases react in the presence of sunlight. Reactive organic gases come from unburned fuel and vapors from solvents, paint, thinners, for example.

Problems: Ozone reduces lung capacity, causing coughing and chest pain, compounds health problems for those suffering from asthma or bronchitis, and damages crops, forests, and building materials.

Oxides of Nitrogen

Origin: Oxides of nitrogen result from the burning of fossil fuels such as gasoline, oil and natural gas by motor vehicles, oil refineries and electrical power plants.

Problems: One of two major ingredients of ozone. Contributes to the formation of acid fog and rain as well as microscopic particles which reduce atmospheric visibility and can lodge deep in the lungs causing respiratory illness.

Microscopic Particles

Origin: Known as PM10 for “particulate matter smaller than 10 microns in diameter (about a 10th the thickness of a human hair), these microscopic particles include windblown dust and diesel exhaust as well as particles that are formed by the chemical transformation of oxides of nitrogen, sulfur oxides and reactive organic gases into particles.

Problems: Reduces atmospheric visibility and is seen as a brown haze in the sky on a smoggy day. The particles can also be inhaled and lodge deep in the lungs to cause respiratory illness.

The Prognosis

These charts show how levels of various air pollutants in 2010 would compare to federal clean air standards. The federal standard is at the 100% line. The graph on the left shows how much various pollutants would exceed the federal standard if no further air pollution controls were imposed. The bar graph on the right indicates that approval of the new Air Quality Management Plan would bring all four pollutants at or within the federal standard.

Percent of Federal Standards NITROGEN DIOXIDE: 112

PM10: 241

OZONE: 248

CARBON MONOXIDE: 146

Percent of Federal Standards NITROGEN DIOXIDE: 60

PM10: 88

OZONE: 100

CARBON MONOXIDE: 26