No Answer Blowing in Wind for High Desert Beset by Sandstorms : Environment: AQMD officials say Antelope Valley air quality is adequate. But they have no advice for complaining residents.

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

That’s what air quality officials wondered Wednesday after coming to the Antelope Valley to declare that the high desert’s air is fairly good. But the officials were sandbagged by residents who complained 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.

Some officials and residents say sandstorms in the high desert this year 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 used to provide 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, residents were first surprised that air quality officials did not 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, these’s no way we can deal with that,” said Chung Liu, planning manager for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which enforces air quality rules in Los Angeles and three adjoining counties.

Liu and other officials told the 40 or so people at the hearing that the AQMD generally cannot enforce air quality rules against naturally occurring conditions. And he said it is difficult to determine if construction or stripped farmland, or nature, is the cause.

AQMD officials held the hearing to announce that they, along with Kern County officials, plan to continue an 18-month-old 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 microscopic particles of airborne dust, dirt, sand and other materials--known officially as particulates or PM10--that can be inhaled and cause respiratory problems. Although most of urban Southern California does not meet that standard, AQMD officials said they believe the Antelope Valley does.

Residents 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 much 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 restrictions on developers whose projects stir up dust, and requiring slower speeds on dusty roads.

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 a 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 daily standard of 50. But AQMD officials said sandstorms may produce larger particles not covered by the regulation.