The Drive to Be as Clean as Possible : The state must keep its lead in pollution-control

The California Air Resources Board is in Los Angeles today, taking one last look at its plan to require virtually all cars sold in California by the year 2000 to run far cleaner than anything now on the road.

Short of some miraculous disclosure that Southern California is no longer the nation’s smog capital--a most unlikely development--it should plunge right ahead.

Certainly nothing that Chairman Jan Sharpless and the eight other board members heard during Thursday’s public hearing argued persuasively that the state should not--as is its habit--lead the nation into a new generation of pollution-control.

In general, the state board’s goals will support the transportation targets of Southern California’s chief smog control agency. The South Coast Air Quality Management District is implementing the nation’s strictest anti-pollution controls in an effort to wipe the skies clean enough to meet federal air-quality standards by early in the next century.

One state goal is to have every car sold in California during the model year 2003 meet what the board staff calls “ultra clean” standards. Even before 2003, a rising percentage of them would have to reduce the key ingredients of smog that escape from their tailpipes.

The two worst actors in that regard are hydrocarbons (mostly fumes of unburned gasoline) and nitrogen oxides (a byproduct of any burning of fossil fuels). Under the plan, the progress in cutting these deadly emissions would be steady and impressive. For example, by 1996, one of every five new cars on the road would have to cut hydrocarbon emissions to half of what they were just three years earlier.

Meeting stricter standards will require a three-way effort. Manufacturers will have to redesign engines. The oil industry will have to redesign formulas for refineries that produce fuel for those engines.

The third effort involves the motorist. We would all have to pay more for cars and fuels. Although nobody even wants to guess how much more, it is encouraging to note that the board staff says that the Nissan Sentra on the road today already meets the 1994 hydrocarbon standard. So some are ahead of the game.

The air board also wants somewhere between 2% and 10% of new cars built between 1998 and 2003 to spread absolutely no pollutants around. The only vehicle that meets that description today is an electric car.

Again, the goal is less radical than it might have sounded 10 years ago. Southern California Edison Co. and the L. A. Department of Water and Power already have invested $7 million in a program to build an experimental fleet of 10,000 electric cars over the next several years.

Finally, the board wants higher standards and lower pollution levels for reformulated fuel to power the cars already on the road.

The enterprise is neither doubt-free nor risk-free. As before, some industry leaders ask where the new technology will come from and worry that it can’t be done. As before, California has no real choice but to try.