Anti-Smog Plan Could Limit Amount of Building

Ventura County air pollution officials are proposing tough anti-smog measures that would triple the number of new commercial and residential developments that must be scaled down or modified to reduce the air pollution they generate.

Fast-food restaurants, gas stations with 12 pumps, convenience stores and even movie theaters could be required to submit environmental impact reports under the new regulations, according to Air Pollution Control District officials. Under similar scrutiny would be new residential developments of at least 114 homes.

“These new guidelines are a significant addition to our efforts to reduce emissions in the county,” said Richard Baldwin, county air pollution control officer.

The district, which produced the stricter guidelines to help the county meet federal and state clean air standards, came under attack from business groups after it released the regulations this week. The Building Industry Assn. criticized the proposals as misguided, too restrictive and too expensive.

“Nothing is more expensive to a developer,” said Paul Tryon, executive officer of the association’s Ventura County office. “It’s always more expensive to the consumer.” He said the district should focus on cutting automotive emissions instead of restricting development.

The rules are aimed primarily at cutting pollution from automobile trips generated by development, Baldwin said. Industrial sources of pollution such as factories and power plants have a separate set of rules.

The new rules, to be considered by the Board of Supervisors on Oct. 24, reduce by two-thirds the threshold of emissions that force developers into the environmental review process in the county and its 10 cities. In addition, they change the method of calculating pollution from an annual maximum limit of emissions to a daily limit. The change could affect special events requiring local special-use permits--such as the proposed Renaissance Faire--as well as such seasonal activities as oil drilling and construction.

The new guidelines affect developers uniformly throughout the county, replacing the 1983 rules that placed less stringent requirements on building in the Ojai Valley.

But they do not go far enough, according to some environmentalists.

Russ Baggerly of Citizens to Preserve the Ojai, a group that successfully sued the district for stricter air pollution controls in 1988, criticized the proposal as too soft.

“These new guidelines are only a slight improvement over where we should have been six years ago,” he said.

The document, officially called Guidelines for the Preparation of Air Quality Impact Analyses, provides rules for municipal and county governing bodies to determine whether proposed projects will harm air quality and contribute to the county’s escalating smog problem.

Ventura County has the sixth-worst ozone pollution in the nation. The primary ingredient in smog, ozone is produced largely from car emissions.

The guidelines decrease the annual threshold of 13.7 tons per year of nitrogen oxides and reactive organic compounds--the constituents of ozone--to 25 pounds per day, or the equivalent of about 4.6 tons per year, assuming that emissions are emitted equally every day.

Those numbers will be considered when projects such as housing tracts or shopping centers come up for city or county approval. However, local governments would retain the option of approving any projects they want if they find “overriding considerations” that merit violating the pollution standards.

But most developers whose plans exceed the limits would be required to reduce the size of their projects or find other ways to reduce the anticipated pollution, such as offering employees van pools or four-day workweeks. Home builders could also install bike lanes and walking paths, and such pollution-reducing features as centralized water heaters in condominiums and apartment projects.