Desert Residents Upset Over Things Blowing in the Wind

How can you stop sand and dirt from blowing in the desert?

That’s what air quality officials were left wondering Wednesday after coming to the Antelope Valley to declare that the high desert’s air is fairly good, only to be sandbagged by residents complaining of sandstorms so bad this summer that they sometimes can’t see across the street.

“Since March, I’ve hardly been able to see my horse,” said Karen Jahns, noting that her animal stands only about 250 feet from her house. Jahns, a resident of Rosamond, a small community about 80 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, said her complaints have drawn no action.

“Our vision is less than 100 feet where we’re living. We can’t see across the street,” said Mary Massarella, a resident of nearby Palmdale, referring to sandstorms in the high desert that some officials and residents say are the worst they have seen in decades.

Those who live in the fast-growing region blame the storms on a fourth year of drought that has left the high desert bone-dry, the accompanying decline of farming that once provided ground cover, and construction activity that strips bare the land. Then there is the fact that the desert is, after all, filled with sand.

During a two-hour hearing in Palmdale, anxious residents were surprised that air quality officials didn’t seem much aware of the extent of the sandstorms, which have come sporadically this year. Later, residents were disappointed that not much was offered in the way of solutions.

“We’re not going to pave over the desert or anything like that. Blowing sand from the desert, there’s no way we can deal with that,” said Chung Liu, planning manager of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which enforces air quality rules in Los Angeles and three adjoining counties.

Liu and other air quality officials told about 40 people who attended the hearing that the AQMD generally can’t enforce air quality rules against naturally occurring conditions. And he said it’s difficult to determine when construction or stripped farmland is the cause as opposed to nature.

AQMD officials held the hearing to announce that they and Kern County officials plan to continue an 18-month air-monitoring program in the Antelope Valley for another 18 months. Its purpose is to determine whether the area complies with a key federal standard for particulates. Called PM10, particulates are the microscopic particles of airborne dust, dirt, sand and other materials that can be inhaled and cause respiratory problems. Although most of urbanized Southern California does not meet that standard, AQMD officials said they believe that the Antelope Valley does.

Residents, however, complained that the AQMD’s readings for the area are inadequate. Although the AQMD has a monitoring station in downtown Lancaster, residents argued that conditions elsewhere can be drastically different. And they protested the AQMD’s practice of taking readings only every six days.

If an area is found not to be in compliance, the state can require remedies, including slower speeds on dusty roads and restrictions on developers whose projects stir up dust.

Officially, the high desert’s compliance status for particulates is still uncertain. But AQMD officials said readings from their Lancaster monitoring station last year met the federal standard. And they promised to take readings in outlying areas to assess residents’ complaints.

Lancaster last year had an annual daily average of 47 micrograms of PM10 per cubic meter of air, the lowest of seven monitoring sites in Los Angeles County, and below the federal annual standard of 50. AQMD officials, however, said sandstorms can produce larger particles not covered by the regulation.

In comparison, according to the AQMD, PM10 averages for 1989 in other areas were 61.1 in Los Angeles, 49.7 in Hawthorne, 64.7 in Burbank, 50.5 in Long Beach, 60.7 in Azusa and 53.5 in Santa Clarita. Areas of Riverside and San Bernardino counties had annual averages in the 80s and 90s.

Besides earthmoving activities, many industrial processes release particulates into the air.