Air Quality Is Still Poor, But It Has Improved : Pollution: The county’s smog is fourth worst in the state. However, officials believe the area can reach acceptable government standards by 2010.

It’s visible to anyone who drives over the Conejo Grade into Camarillo and Oxnard, or over the Santa Susana Pass into Simi Valley.

Smog.

As a whole, Ventura County’s air is the fourth worst in California for ozone pollution, according to state measurements, and this time of year--from May through October--is when it is dirtiest.

But there is a bright spot on the hazy horizon: Air quality in Ventura County has improved marginally in the past decade despite a 25% population increase. Officials credit the improvement to county regulations on industry and development that produced a 25% to 30% drop in emissions.

What’s more, for the first time, officials are saying they expect the county’s air quality to continue to improve, thanks to stricter state tailpipe emission standards and stronger local regulations. Sometime between 2000 and 2010, they say, the county is expected to meet state and federal health standards for clean air.

“We will be ahead of the power curve on growth,” the county’s air pollution control officer, Richard Baldwin, predicted.

For now, however, the county fails government standards for ozone and is under a federal court order to reduce pollution.

Ozone, a primary component of smog, is formed when hydrocarbons react with oxides of nitrogen in sunlight. Hydrocarbons come mainly from tailpipe emissions and oil drilling, while the oxides of nitrogen come from power plants and other industrial sources.

How bad the air is depends on where you live.

Residents of Ventura and Oxnard along the coast, for instance, experienced only two days last year when their air was unhealthy by federal standards. In contrast, residents of Simi Valley, home of the county’s worst smog, breathed unhealthy air 40 days in 1989.

Simi Valley, with more than 100,000 residents, generates much of its own pollution, but it also gets a steady stream of dirty air from other parts of the county, thanks to prevailing winds from the west.

Cool ocean winds push industrial pollutants, power plant emissions and tailpipe exhaust from the Ventura Freeway across the county and into hot Simi Valley. The wind-borne pollutants mix with emissions from Simi Valley industries to form a sometimes dense and harmful layer of smog. An inversion layer above the smog keeps it from rising and dissipating.

Simi Valley gets an additional dose from the east at night, when winds calm and pollutants creep over the Santa Susana Pass from the San Fernando Valley.

Thousand Oaks has a pattern similar to Simi Valley’s, but because it is closer to the ocean it collects fewer pollutants and generally has better air than Simi Valley, although it had 11 unhealthful days last year.

Wind and mountains play a big role in making the Ojai Valley the second-worst smog pocket in Ventura County in most years, although it had only five unhealthful days last year. Surrounded on three sides by mountains, the valley’s locally generated smog is combined with bad air that is carried in from offshore oil operations and Ventura industries. Also, Santa Barbara smog slips into Ojai over the Casitas Pass.

The agricultural areas of Santa Paula, Fillmore and Piru catch pollutants moving west up the Santa Clara River and add to the smog with hydrocarbons from pesticides.

Oxnard has the two largest stationary sources of pollution in the county, the Southern California Edison plants at Ormond Beach and Mandalay Bay. Oxnard and Ventura also have several smaller polluting industries, and they get smog blowing ashore from oil drilling operations in the Santa Barbara Channel.

But most of the time the pollutants keep heading east, leaving the air along the coast and over nearby communities such as Camarillo relatively clean.

Occasionally, Los Angeles County smog reaches Ventura County. That occurs when Santa Ana winds from the east blow pollutants over the ocean and onshore winds later push it north over the Ventura coast.

Such conditions prevailed last year when Ventura County experienced three days of first-stage smog alerts, periods when the sick, the very young and very old are urged to stay indoors.

Occurring in April, the smog alerts were considered freak episodes, prompted by unusual weather conditions and hot Santa Ana winds. East winds blew polluted air out over the ocean, where it baked in the sun for days.

When the Santa Anas cooled, and the prevailing winds from the west kicked in, the mass of dirty air blew back over land, causing a dim gray film to settle over the coast. Following the usual pattern, the mass eventually moved east into Simi Valley.

Baldwin said emissions are only part of the pollution equation. The weather, which provides the essential heat element that cooks various emissions into photochemical smog, will help determine how close the county comes to meeting air standards.

“If we had a horrible heat wave, we could still have poor air quality. The only difference is that it would have been worse without the reductions.”

Officials say most of the county’s air pollution is caused by Ventura County residents and businesses.

But environmental activists, who have challenged the Air Pollution Control District’s plan to clean up the county’s air, say the district’s officials are also responsible.

Marc Chytilo, chief counsel for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center, a nonprofit law firm, said the county’s rules for limiting pollution are ineffective.

Chytilo and the environmental group Citizens to Preserve the Ojai sued the Environmental Protection Agency after the district’s 1982 Air Quality Management Plan failed to show ways that the county could reach clean air standards, as the federal Clean Air Act required.

As part of a case settlement, the court ordered that the EPA devise its own plan for the district to meet the standards. That plan is still being developed.

“One of the effects of the federal lawsuit was to light a fire under the Air Pollution Control District,” Chytilo said.

But Baldwin said the district was already well on its way in rule-making when the suit came up, and said the district is not waiting for the EPA before developing tough new rules.

“We were putting together a plan long before we were pushed into this,” he said. He said the 1982 Air Quality Management Plan was one of four in the nation that were realistic in predicting that the county would fail to meet standards by 1987 as the Clean Air Act required. He said 100 other air pollution districts nationwide missed the 1987 deadline.

Chytilo said the district is lax in doing its job and cites an agreement between Ventura County and Southern California Edison.

Edison proposes to merge with San Diego Gas & Electric, shifting much of its operations and resulting nitrogen-oxide air pollution from San Diego to Ventura County. According to a deal drafted by the district and approved by the County Board of Supervisors, Edison would more than offset all the additional emissions the merger would bring by a ratio of 1.5 to 1 over 18 years.

To do that, Edison would pay for other companies that cause smog to convert to pollution-free operations.

But the pollution savings would come later. During the first five years after the merger, Ventura County would get as much as 706 additional tons a year of nitrogen oxide emissions. About 25,000 tons of nitrogen oxide are now produced countywide every year.

Lungs of area residents would be damaged, Chytilo said, regardless of what happens in the final 13 years of the agreement.

“That’s very misleading of Edison to say they will mitigate all the emissions,” he said.

The EPA is also concerned about the merger, saying approval could stall efforts by the agency and the county Air Pollution Control District to meet clean-air standards.

Air Pollution Control officials said they cut the best deal they could. It would have been worse for the county if the Public Utilities Commission were to approve the merger without the agreement, said William Mount, district director of planning.

Whether the merger is approved or not, the county is planning further restrictions on power plants, including a rule that would require a 90% reduction in emissions.

In another attack on smog, the county is considering regulations on the agents used to dissolve and spread pesticides. Those agents emit hydrocarbons, among the principal components of ozone. Baldwin believes that pesticides account for more than a quarter of hydrocarbons produced in the county.

Because pesticides are federally regulated and are manufactured worldwide, Baldwin said, the county cannot restrict their use unilaterally without devastating agriculture, the county’s largest industry.

A state task force headed by Baldwin will begin formulating proposed state legislation next month on pesticides. An EPA representative sits on the panel.

A key element of the district’s plan to reduce air pollution is a trip reduction rule that will go into effect in November. The rule, which will be phased in over two years, will require all employers of more than 50 people to provide incentives to keep their employees off the roads during peak traffic hours.

Incentives could include financial help for car-pools, guaranteed rides home for car-poolers who stay late at work, staggered work hours or home workstations.

Another regulation would require developers who want to build in the area to compensate for the increased traffic their projects generate. For instance, developers might have to pay for other businesses to convert their polluting diesel engines to cleaner electric motors.

Diesel engines on oil wells will also have to be converted to cleaner motors under new regulations.

Under another proposed regulation, all businesses that operate fleets of cars will probably have to convert them to clean fuels such as electricity or methanol.

State regulations will soon require consumer products such as hair spray and deodorant to be reformulated so they do not emit hydrocarbons.

County officials vow to continue to churn out rules until ozone pollution is diminished to the point where the county’s air is clean and healthy.

County environmentalists vow with equal determination to make sure that goal is met.

VENTURA COUNTY’S SMOG

Trapped by the mountains--Prevailing westerly wind patterns off shore push smog east over the county into inland valleys, trapping polluted air against mountains. During the smog season, May though October, warm air, called inversion layers, holds the pollution in place beneath it.

SMOG DAYS

Number of days exceeding federal health standards for air quality:

1977 ’78 ’79 ’80 ’81 ’82 ’83 ’84 ’85 ’86 ’87 Camarillo/El Rio 14 8 9 3 8 3 7 1 3 5 5 Ventura 6 NA NA 4 3 3 7 3 2 1 4 Simi Valley 87 91 53 29 38 60 49 33 35 50 22 Fillmore/Piru NA NA NA NA NA 13 16 5 7 9 5 Ojai 39 24 25 33 27 25 10 3 6 10 3 Thousnd Oaks 43 9 18 27 NA 13 13 5 10 12 2

‘88 ’89 Camarillo/El Rio 3 2 Ventura 1 2 Simi Valley 52 40 Fillmore/Piru 8 4 Ojai 3 5 Thousnd Oaks 9 11

NA: Not available