MICHAEL BROWN : Clearing the Air About Irvine : Environmental Chief Vows to Continue Innovative Policy

Under the leadership of Larry Agran, the city of Irvine gained national attention for a series of ambitious but controversial local initiatives to protect the environment. And though Agran was defeated by Sally Anne Sheridan in the recent mayoral election, his environmental programs, which some believe contributed to his defeat, remain in place for the moment.

Michael Brown, hired last year as the city’s environmental program administrator, is determined to make those programs work. Brown, who holds a Ph.D. in chemistry, was recruited last year to implement the city’s much-publicized ban on ozone-depleting chemicals (primarily chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs) and he’s optimistic that the city will continue to take an active approach to pollution-related problems.

The CFC ordinance, the first of its kind in the nation, went into effect on July 1, and Brown says it has helped produce a substantial cut in the use of ozone-depleting chemicals in Irvine--even though many companies have asked for exemptions from the law. Brown hopes to build on the experience with a broader program to provide technical assistance to businesses to help them cut pollution.

Times staff writer Jonathan Weber spoke with Brown about the status of the CFC ordinance, his plans for the future and how the change in the political regime in Irvine has affected his job.

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Q. What has been the impact of the CFC ordinance thus far?

A. We did a brief study of what the large users emitted in 1988 versus what they emitted in 1989 for two major ozone-depleting chemicals, CFC 113 and methyl chloroform, both of which are used primarily as solvent chemicals. We saw a reduction of 45% to 50% overall, from about 1.5 million pounds to 800,000 pounds.

Q. That was before the ban even took effect?

A. Right, although I think what you saw in 1989 was an anticipation of the ordinance going into effect, and the cost of CFCs going up.

Q. How have you gone about establishing who is emitting ozone-depleting chemicals?

A. The large ones are required to report their emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency. And then there’s another whole group that falls under the EPA threshold for reporting, and we sought them out by mailings, by identifying companies in businesses that typically use these chemicals. In a few cases, people have alerted us of companies they know of who have been using this stuff.

Q. And how many companies did you find?

A. There are probably about 100 out there. To date, about 65 have asked for exemptions, and I think we’ve got to go out and find the other 25 or 50. I have either talked to them or not received an exemption request, and they’ll be hearing from us again soon.

Q. How is the exemption process working? Have all those 65 exemptions been granted?

A. Yes, the exemptions have been granted. What we are looking for from companies, first, is that they’ve made an effort to find alternatives; and second, that they’ve attempted to reduce their use or emissions.

The exemptions are split among three groups. One is a group that has found an alternative, and the equipment is on order and they’re just doing field testing or something. The second group is those that have made a laundry list of things they’ve looked at and the reasons those things didn’t work for them.

The third group is people with very specific product specifications, either military specifications or a Food and Drug Administration-approved product.

Q. How long are the exemptions valid?

A. The short-term exemptions are for one year. The military exemption is three years, and the ordinance says they can have an exemption until the military specification is changed.

Q. How about the exemption for health-care equipment manufacturers who need FDA approval?

A. Health care is actually for five years. The way the approval process works is that you qualify a part, or qualify a product, and it is manufactured a certain way. If you have a new process, you have to go back and requalify, and you can’t do that in a week.

That also applies in the case of subcontractors, where you’re making a product for McDonnell Douglas, or Boeing or General Electric, and they’ll send you a specification that says, ‘Thou shalt use X-Y-Z.’ You go back to them and say, ‘I don’t want to use this stuff.’ It takes time. But the military and the FDA are aware of the CFC issue.

Q. What is the biggest category of exemptions?

A. Most of them are de minimus exemptions, meaning they emit less than 55 gallons or 450 pounds of all (ozone-depleting chemicals). To some people, 55 gallons sounds like a lot, but in the grand scheme of life it’s pretty minimal. That’s a general exemption; you just check the box and demonstrate you use less than 55 gallons.

We are going to go back to the (city of Irvine’s) Science Advisory Committee (a panel of business, government and academic experts set up to help implement the ordinance) and talk about how we can lower and phase out that de minimus exemption. Maybe next year, instead of 55 gallons it will be 13 gallons. And when companies get a de minimus exemption, they still have to demonstrate that they have made efforts to minimize use and looked for alternatives. This is not a freebie, but we’re not going to hold them to all these requirements for reports and research, which we do require for the others.

Q. Do you actually go out and visit companies?

A. I’ve been out to a dozen or 15 companies to look at individual processes. We have a part-time consultant who is dealing with some of the technical issues. And we have a couple of what I call interns. One of them is semi-retired and has a Ph.D. They’re out there trying to help companies find alternative technologies or alternative processes.

Q. Do you have any sense of how much the smaller users have reduced CFC emissions?

A. It’s interesting that one thing the de minimus exemption has done is motivate people to get under the 55-gallon threshold. But the big guys are the vast majority. The rest combined account for perhaps 20,000, 30,000 or maybe 50,000 pounds. We’ve knocked something off that. But it’s not huge quantities.

Q. Initially, businesses were hostile to this ordinance, and then they began to come around. How would you characterize their attitude now?

A. I think it’s amicable. The concern of most firms was that whoever took my job was going to come in and bludgeon them and tell them they couldn’t use CFCs, and say goodby. My approach is that it does no good whatsoever to say, “You can’t use it here. I don’t care where you go, but you can’t use it here.” If they shut down and move to Tustin or Arizona and use the same products there, what good has that done?

I’d rather give them an exemption, and be looking over their shoulder and saying, “Go look for an alternative because your exemption is up on June 30, 1991.” At that time, we are going to be a whole lot tougher on granting an exemption. Especially if you haven’t even looked for an alternative.

We’re trying to structure the exemptions to put requirements on most people to look and evaluate alternatives. They have to give me a report in March and in some cases a preliminary report even before that. It will give me a chance to look at what they’ve done. If they haven’t done anything, I’m not going to recommend an extension of the exemption.

Q. What kind of sanctions can be imposed if they don’t do anything?

A. The sanctions are a misdemeanor, $500 for each violation and/or six months in jail. If they persist in willful disregard of the ordinance, we can seek a court order to stop the activity.

A more interesting case is that the South Coast Air Quality Management District, by law, is required to implement local ordinances that are at least as stringent (as) their rules. The thing we’re exploring with AQMD is whether they can go after a company that violates a local ordinance using their enforcement powers and their fines, which can be $25,000 a day. And they can pursue criminal action.

Q. What’s AQMD’s attitude about getting involved in that?

A. They’re very interested, because they now have their global warming and ozone depletion policy, and it’s easier for them to figure out what they’re going to do with that given a little practice with Irvine. To implement it all across the district would involve maybe 20,000 or 30,000 companies, rather than the 100 companies in Irvine. They’re saying: “This is a great test case. Glad you guys are out front on this.”

That’s another thing I tell companies. “You may not be happy with what Irvine is doing, but the reality is that AQMD is going to have rules on this. By 1997, CFCs are going to be banned within the district. The EPA is going to come out with rules. And all you guys who can figure out what to do are not going to have this headache.”

Q. How has the election of Sally Anne Sheridan as mayor affected all this? This law was very much Larry Agran’s baby, and Mayor Sheridan was never a supporter of it.

A. Sally Anne is concerned about the issue. She differed on the approach; she would have been more comfortable had it been not an ordinance but instead a city program that was out there educating businesses on alternatives. To the extent we continue with this approach that is primarily education-oriented and not run around trying to bludgeon people, I think she and other new council members will be supportive.

We’ve demonstrated that companies are capable of finding alternatives and reducing emissions. Having an ordinance in place means it will happen more quickly than it would have otherwise.

CFCs, and especially solvents, are an ancillary part of the production process. It’s not a primary input. So most companies haven’t paid much attention to how they use this stuff. Until a few years ago, when the price started going up, it was a trivial cost. CFC 113 went from a buck a pound to $3.50 or $4.50 a pound. That’s no longer cheap.

So companies have started looking for alternatives, and even if they can’t find one, they’re asking whether they need to use so much of the stuff. They see the issue as having to do (as) much with efficient production as with ozone depletion.

Q. If you got to the point where you had to go around and apply sanctions, would there be political support for that?

A. I think so. I think people want to see it done in a way which gives companies an opportunity to come into compliance without sanctions. But if we’ve given them an opportunity and they continue to refuse to comply, I think I’ll have support for sanctions. But the message from this council is pretty clear: We should give them the opportunity to come into compliance.

Q. Your title is environmental program administrator. What other activities are you involved in besides the CFC ordinance?

A. The city is trying to figure out where all its environmental activities currently happen, and how these activities should be organized. So part of my function is to look at what’s being done and who is doing it. That involves everything from planning necessary to comply with the solid waste-management plan to the hazardous waste planning required by the county. And, of course, the city has a recycling program.

I’m interested in bridging some of the different concerns. For example, suppose a company comes to town and starts up a new process, and they do all the right things. They notify the Fire Department and say, “We have this list of hazardous substances,” and they pay their fee, and if they’ve got an air (quality) thing they get their AQMD permit, if they have a water (quality) thing they get their permit from the Irvine Ranch Water District or Orange County Sanitation, if they generate hazardous waste they go get an EPA permit. Everything is fine.

My concern is that the city is still put in a position of having to plan and account for the waste that it generates, whether hazardous waste or solid waste. That’s going to be the city’s responsibility as part of the county’s waste plan. And the more hazardous waste that’s generated in Irvine, the more likely it is that Irvine will have to have a hazardous waste facility.

My response is, let’s not take for granted the use of hazardous materials or the generation of waste. When people build an office tower, why not have them do office paper recycling right from the start? I’d like to set up a program to look at these sorts of issues, to promote reductions in waste.

Q. Do you see this strictly as an educational program or would you and your office have some kind of broader authority? Now, for example, the solid waste is handled by the public works department. Would that then come under your purview?

A. No, they are doing the recycling program. I’m hoping we can set up some kind of technical assistance program for businesses on hazardous materials and pollution-related issues. We can also be a resource to public works in their efforts to do the recycling program.

Q. How big a staff would you envision having?

A. Half a dozen people, ultimately, whose orientation would be industrial engineering, manufacturing and management. I used to run a similar program in Massachusetts, and there is an interesting group of people doing this.

In California, most of these kinds of things are run at the county level. Here in Orange County, there is the beginnings of an assistance program, but most of the emphasis is on enforcement. Ventura County has had a very active assistance program in waste minimization. The argument I have made is that it’s in the city’s interest to have an active waste minimization program, so we don’t get stuck with facilities that we might not otherwise need.

Q. Is there political support for this sort of activist approach? One could say it’s not really your job to tell businesses what to do, that they’re perfectly capable of understanding the environmental issues.

A. I haven’t had the opportunity to talk to each of the council members, but I have talked to Sally Anne about it and I think her orientation is that if we can give businesses some help with their hazardous waste, that’s great. She is very aware of the hazardous waste issues.

There are two sides to it. One is that most people in business, especially if they’ve been in business a while, are very good at making widgets or providing whatever service, and they make a good living doing it. And that’s great. But what they’re not necessarily good at is figuring out whether they have to use the hazardous materials they’ve been using for 40 years.

Most do not evaluate their production process from this perspective. “Do I have to use this material, and do I have to use this much of it?” Very few ask that question. Most of them ask, “How do I get this widget out the door and make a profit and make my customers happy?”

Governmental entities that do these technical assistance programs are not going in saying you should completely change what you do. They say, if you use these hazardous materials, you generate these wastes, and here are some things we have seen elsewhere that may work for you.

It is a process of helping them come to an understanding that they should look at the issue. And secondly, to help them get information, do the economic analysis and, in some cases, hold their hands while they determine whether a new process works on the shop floor. These programs extend companies’ expertise in these areas.