Smog and Power
Ventura County’s smog problem is the third worst in California and the sixth worst in the United States. The county’s biggest air pollution problem is ozone, produced by nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and sunlight. Our ozone level currently exceeds federal and state oxone standards by about 50%.
The biggest source of nitrogen oxides is cars. They produce about half of it, and the rest comes from manufacturing and power plants. The two Southern California Edison plants at Ormond Beach and Mandalay Bay, operating at a mere 30% of their actual capacity, contribute another third.
The technology to eliminate up to 95% of these emissions already exists. It is called selective catalytic reduction, or SCR. Think of SCR as a giant catalytic converter, similar to the one in your car’s exhaust, installed in the smokestack of a power plant.
Thanks to catalytic converters and computerized engine management systems, today’s cars run 90% cleaner than they did 20 years ago. They’re so clean, in fact, that no matter what emission controls we put on them in the future, they aren’t going to run much cleaner.
As older vehicles vanish from the road, the percentage of total nitrogen oxide emissions from cars in the county will go down a little. But the only way to really reduce automotive emissions any further in new cars is to eliminate the internal combustion engine as a power plant.
So, instead of vainly eliminating another few parts per million of NOx from car exhausts, at a cost out of proportion to the benefits realized, we have an opportunity to eliminate one-third of the nitrogen oxide emissions in our county by cleaning up two polluters! In Japan, many SCR-equipped power plants like ours have virtually eliminated these emissions.
It would cost $65 million to modify the Edison plants with this technology. That cost, passed on to the hundreds of thousands of ratepayers and amortized over 20 years, would increase your monthly electric bill by a mere 5%. Compared to the health costs of doing nothing, that’s pretty negligible.
Tragically, Edison has steadfastly opposed adoption of the SCR control measures that would reduce its nitrogen oxide emissions. Now it wants the California Public Utilities Commission to approve its request for a merger with San Diego Gas & Electric. Such a measure, if approved, will give it a monopoly on electric power production in Southern California and make it the largest electric utility in the United States.
And San Diego Gas & Electric? Some of its older and less-efficient plants are spewing nitrogen oxide emissions into San Diego’s air. The merger will allow Edison to shut down those old plants and transfer their production to our two plants.
Obviously, the merger is a good deal for the companies and for San Diego, which gets cleaner air. But Ventura County? We get more nitrogen oxide.
Edison says it will reduce by 145% the increase caused by the greater output of its two plants. But there’s a catch. It wants about five years to reduce nitrogen oxide levels. In the meantime, NOx emissions will go up significantly.
Given an opportunity to tell the companies how Venturans feel about the proposed merger--and what it will do to our air quality--what did Dick Baldwin, head of the Air Pollution Control District, and the Board of Supervisors do? They approved it!
MIKE STUBBLEFIELD
El Rio
