IRVINE : Environmentalists Hail Agran Stands

Mayor Larry Agran, whose slow-growth and environmental policies have won statewide attention but sometimes caused him political troubles at home, traveled to San Diego on Wednesday to exhort other city officials to brave the potential fallout and follow Irvine’s lead.

“We’ve got an environmental-reclamation task before us that is unprecedented in the history of the world,” Agran said during a press conference sponsored by the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club. “It is worthy of our fear, and it is worthy of our talents.”

Agran was hailed throughout the San Diego area by environmentalists who sponsored a day of speeches and meetings with him. Irvine’s model offers cities a way of influencing national policy and strengthening environmental protection, the activists said.

“Mayor Larry Agran inspires us,” said Ruth Duemler, a Sierra Club air-quality expert. “We thank you for the inspiration.”

In particular, Duemler and her colleagues praised Irvine’s ground-breaking ordinance to sharply restrict emissions of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, pollutants that scientists say are contributing to the dangerous deterioration of the Earth’s ozone layer.

Irvine’s ordinance, the toughest enacted by any local jurisdiction in the country, passed last year and goes into effect this summer. If other cities follow suit, proponents of the ban envision such a far-reaching patchwork of local ordinances that industry would welcome national restrictions, if only to standardize emission regulations.

During his press conference and in a speech later Wednesday, Agran also proposed a dramatic reduction in national defense spending--cuts of as much as $200 billion. He said cities should lobby for those cuts, and at least a portion of the savings should be reinvested in local programs.

“It is our money. We want it back,” Agran said. “The Cold War is over.”

Agran’s defense and environmental views, which won him a standing ovation Wednesday night, have also attracted national attention to Irvine. But the spotlight has come at a political price, the mayor conceded. Councilwoman Sally Anne Sheridan, Agran’s chief rival for the mayor’s post that will be decided in the June 5 election, said that Agran’s remarks reflect the priority he gives to national issues.

“I’m very much more concerned about local issues than in enlisting San Diego’s support for a national agenda,” Sheridan said. “While we’re promoting international policy, we’re not doing enough about traffic or congestion on our own city streets. I’m not saying that people in Irvine shouldn’t be involved in those issues and shouldn’t be members of the Sierra Club, but that’s not the job of the city.”

Agran brushed aside those criticisms, saying he believes that Irvine residents support his environmental views and agree with the city’s strong posture on those issues.

“There’s certainly going to be some local political opposition to officials who undertake anything beyond filling potholes,” Agran said. “But I think my constituents and most constituents are very sophisticated. . . . People will give you the right answer if you ask the right question.”