Consensus Appears Near to Cut Utilities’ Pollution : Smog: Backstage dealing, Edison change of heart fuel hopes for stringent controls by the end of the decade.

Despite the “no soliciting” sign on the front door, electric products are often displayed outside the main entrance to the El Monte headquarters of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Occasionally, electric cars are parked at curbside, ready to ferry anyone interested around the parking lot, while beaming sales representatives proffer business cards and brochures. Last month, the curious had a chance to push an oddly quiet mower over a patch of AQMD grass.

The touting is allowed, even encouraged, by the smog-fighting agency because electric power is free of the noxious chemicals that pour forth from gasoline- or diesel-powered engines. In the AQMD’s plan to purify the air by 2010, electricity is the fuel of the future.

Yet, paradoxically, the manufacture of electricity is one of the dirtiest operations in the Los Angeles region. Electric utility boilers--giant cauldrons in which water is converted to steam for generators--are the largest industrial source of oxides of nitrogen in local skies. Burning natural gas or oil to heat the water is the source of the pollutants, which are responsible for the bourbon color of the horizon.

The attempts to control power-plant pollution date back to the early days of the AQMD, founded in 1977. The long delay was due mostly to the fight put up by local utilities, notably the giant Southern California Edison Co. The reason for the resistance, not surprisingly, is money: the AQMD is asking utilities to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to control the pollution.

Today, the AQMD board will take up the challenge once more. But this time, though last-minute haggling continues, there are strong indications that the struggle is finally ending and stringent controls will be in place by decade’s end.

Edison’s new chairman, a co-founder of a national environmental group, has announced publicly that his company will support the latest version of the regulation and spend $700 million to comply. Local environmental and public-health activists say the measure is tough enough that they will back it too. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is pushing for a few more changes, but “we’re going to try to have everyone reach agreement before the (board) meeting,” said John W. Schumann, the DWP manager of research and development.

AQMD Board Chairman A. Norton Younglove says he expects approval.

The measure, known formally as Rule 1135, would reduce utility emissions by December, 1999, by 87%, slightly less than a similar regulation passed in June in Ventura County. Edison would be permitted to spew no more than 1,640 tons of nitrogen oxides into the region’s air annually. The DWP limit would be 960 tons. Three other municipalities also would operate under annual caps: 80 tons for Pasadena, 56 for Burbank, 35 for Glendale.

“It’s only a piece, but it’s a big piece” of the solution to smog, said Mary Nichols, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Fund and a director of the DWP. “It can make the difference between a first-stage episode and not. And by 1999, there will be fewer days when you can’t see the mountains.”

Rule 1135 also is seen as a symbol of big business doing its share. With the AQMD asking dry cleaners to install pollution controls and back yard chefs to give up their lighter fluid, large corporations with deep pockets “have got to step forward,” said James M. Lents, the AQMD’s executive officer.

The expense of complying is expected to cause an increase of about 1% per month in Edison and DWP electric bills.

The apparent consensus took shape over the last nine months. It was not easily forged. Although the AQMD held two public workshops, the real negotiating took place backstage.

Pivotal events included a corporate turnabout at Edison, a subsequent courtship of environmentalists, a luncheon hosted by two AQMD board members and frequent trips to and from Sacramento as various state agencies got involved.

The first step came last November at a rustic lodge at Big Creek, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Top Edison managers were gathered there for a retreat with their chairman of one month.

John Bryson had been with Edison since 1984, serving as chief financial officer. His background, though, was in environmental activism and in government regulation, two forces not always looked upon kindly at the company’s campus-like headquarters in Rosemead. In the 1970s, he helped establish the NRDC, a nationwide environmental law group. He was president of the California Public Utilities Commission from 1979 to 1982.

His goals, accordingly, were not the stuff of corporate convention. A good environment is good business, he told the assembled executives. He said he wanted Edison to be “an excellent citizen.” He told them that accepting responsibility early could pay off in credibility and in flexible terms.

No mention was made of Rule 1135, “nor did I have it in mind,” Bryson recalled last week.

But Robert Dietch, the company’s vice president of engineering, planning and research, recognized that Bryson’s talk signaled a major switch in stance. “He set a new tone,” Dietch said.

Until then, the company had worked feverishly to stave off the power plant rule. It challenged the first version in court, leading to a 1982 settlement creating an annual emissions cap of 11,780 tons for Edison--a 90% reduction.

When the AQMD staff proposed cutting the remaining pollution by another 90% by 1993, Edison hired Nichols to consult on how to proceed. A former Air Resources Board chair, she had not yet taken up her current posts. After several months of work in late 1988 and early 1989, “my advice was ignored,” Nichols recalled last week. “At that stage of the game, Edison was still looking to avoid compliance.”

The utility spent $1 million on a study that questioned whether nitrogen oxides should be controlled at all. The report theorized that the chemicals, by breaking down other pollutants, can actually help fight smog.

During the same period, Edison representatives met quietly with the AQMD’s top staffer, Lents. They agreed that the utility would not oppose the sweeping 20-year clean-air plan then under consideration--a plan that included controls on nitrogen oxides from many sources--and the AQMD would put forward a less costly power-plant rule that would reduce emissions by only another 76%.

“At the time, I thought it was the best we could do,” Lents said recently. “I thought it was a major coup. In retrospect, we could have done a lot better.”

The compromise rule was unveiled in April, 1989. Critics pounced. The following March, the ARB kicked it back, saying the rule was too vague and impossible to enforce.

There was no instant reversal when Bryson ascended. Edison executives continued to lobby; another vote was pending.

But in December, 1990, the AQMD board postponed a decision once more. One reason: the ARB indicated the rule still was not tough enough.

By this time, it was apparent, too, that other forces in Sacramento were paying attention. The California Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission have the final say on where private utilities can build new facilities, and how much they can spend and charge. Officials at both recognized that Rule 1135 could significantly affect the way utilities do business in the Los Angeles area. So they looked at it closely. Applying their knowledge of the industry’s workings, they realized that Edison could get its operation cleaner than the AQMD was asking it to.

As the AQMD staff churned out draft after draft in response to the wave of comments and suggestions, two board members felt their frustration cresting. Larry L. Berg, a tall, blunt and raspy-voiced liberal, was one. Henry W. Wedaa, shorter, jocular and much more conservative, was the other. “The longer we dawdle, the longer we have dirty air,” Wedaa thought.

Telling none of the AQMD staff, they invited an array of interests to have lunch April 10 at an Italian restaurant in Baldwin Park. The next day, Berg passed a message to Lents that the rule needed “corrective surgery” and he had better get personally involved.

Lents took the hint. Once in April and again in May, he brought about a dozen participants to the large oval table in a conference room near his office. Decorum broke down only once, during the second meeting. Michael M. Hertel, Edison’s manager of environmental affairs, reverted to an old argument: controlling nitrogen oxides would not affect smog anyway.

“Oh, no,” burst out Gladys Meade, environmental health director for the American Lung Assn. of Southern California. “We’re back to Square One.”

Lents was filled with misgivings as the gathering broke up. He thought Edison had made some good arguments for technical changes. Still, he said, “I expected that they were going to start lobbying board members and the state” again, no matter what.

The ARB was making its own demands. Its director, James Boyd, had written to Lents specifying the pollution limits that would satisfy the state. They were much lower than in the last AQMD version: for example, 11,200 rather 30,000 pounds for the Edison system every day. ARB staffers traveled to El Monte to help put the rule together.

Then Bryson got involved. The Ventura County pollution control measure had passed June 4 and “it looked to me,” Bryson said, “like . . . we had ended up being perceived as not very responsive.”

Bryson picked up the phone and called environmentalists. “I wanted to make sure I was getting the full perspective,” he said.

On June 12, Edison’s Dietch and Hertel visited the AQMD. Lents waited for pressure. But Dietch said, “I think we’ve got some good news for you, but I can’t tell you what it is.”

Six days later, the AQMD chief faxed his last changes to those who had participated in his conference-room sessions. Edison’s daily cap had been raised slightly, to 13,400 pounds. That seemed reasonable to the group of Edison managers that Bryson convened briefly in his office.

The next day, Bryson announced his backing.

Still, all was not signed and sealed. Next came the DWP. The Los Angeles utility wants its deadline for meeting the hourly rate extended to the year 2005.

The annual and daily caps are no problem, but “we’re not Edison,” said John W. Schumann, DWP’s manager of research and development. “We’re smaller, so we can’t be as flexible as they are.” The extension could save $90 million, he said.

So another round of negotiations got under way. Schumann flew to Sacramento twice in the last three weeks. Three DWP engineers worked round-the-clock running computer models to buttress the utility’s position.

Once again the fax machines were humming, to the AQMD, the ARB, the Lung Assn. and the Coalition for Clean Air. The initial reaction: wariness but willingness to consider DWP’s request.

But nothing will be certain until the AQMD board convenes this morning for its vote.