New Home Sought for Evicted AQMD Smog Monitor Rig

Officials were still searching Friday for a place to park an evicted 10-by-20-foot trailer containing equipment used to monitor coastal air quality.

The trailer was evicted from a city-owned maintenance yard this week. While the South Coast Air Quality Management District seeks a new site, officials say area residents need not worry about smog until May.

“We have come out of the winter period and not until May will we have the influence of the ozone layer. So we are in the clean-air period of the year,” said Bill Bope, AQMD measurements manager.

Although the AQMD considers the county coastal area one of the least polluted in the area (with no first-stage smog alerts reported in 1988), Bope said a monitoring station is vital to the goal of clean air.

“If we don’t do measurements and monitor trends then we can’t issue the warnings and do the things necessary to achieve the air quality that is required,” Bope said.

Bope added that coastal areas are also more prone to “winter smog,” which is characterized by high levels of carbon monoxide.

“This is typical of areas with a lot of traffic near the coast,” Bope said. “It happens in the winter because there is little air movement in the morning and the carbon monoxide stays low to the ground.”

The AQMD had kept its monitoring station on a portion of Costa Mesa’s city maintenance yard next to the Costa Mesa Golf and Country Club on Placentia Avenue since 1979. That station monitored the area bounded by the ocean to the south, the San Diego freeway to the north, MacArthur Boulevard to the east and the Los Angeles County Line to the west.

Officials in Costa Mesa, which charged the AQMD $1 a year for use of its property, notified the AQMD in January that it had 60 days to move its trailer off the land to make room for a new building that will be used to service city equipment.

Although Costa Mesa City Manager Allan L. Roeder said the AQMD was told 6 to 8 months ago it might have to move, air quality officials did not begin their search until the January notice. Officials have checked many sites in the area including the Fairview State Development Center and the Orange County Fairgrounds, but have not found one that meets its many requirements.

“The book is an inch thick,” Bope said refering to the manual containing federal standards for the locations of monitoring stations. “We need to be away form areas with heavy traffic, industry and places with tall buildings because it obstructs the air mass from flowing smoothly.”

Sandy Ryan, air quality instrument specialist, said the AQMD also attempts to find space on government property to cut costs. Like the Costa Mesa station, the four other Orange County stations in Anaheim, El Toro, La Habra and Los Alamitos are on government property with the same type of lease as in Costa Mesa.

One of the AQMD’s main concerns is the continued usefulness of the data from past 10 years in Costa Mesa. Bope said several years of new data from the new location must be collected before the AQMD can determine whether it is compatible with that collected from the Costa Mesa site.

“We have a whole division dedicated to that area (using the data) and I can hear them screaming every time a station is closed,” Ryan said.