A Proposed Disney Resort in Long Beach Would Increase Air Pollution : Environment: Millions of visitors’ cars will contribute to more smog in the port, but the company’s planners are working on ways to lessen the impact.

An estimated 13 million tourists would pour into Long Beach annually if the $3-billion Walt Disney Co. resort is ever built in Queensway Bay, giving an economically depressed city not only a boost in tax revenues but a brand-new source of smog.

Disney officials say they are working hard to lessen the air-pollution damage of a new West Coast resort of rides, restaurants and tourist traffic. Indeed, whatever Disney builds must pass muster with the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which enforces the strictest clean air standards in the country.

But a look at the Disney company’s track record for air pollution at Disneyland in Anaheim reveals a reputation that is not unblemished. The company was cited three times with fines as high as $20,000 between 1987 and 1990 for violating air pollution laws, according to AQMD records.

The AQMD sued Disneyland in Orange County Superior Court in 1987, alleging 13 air pollution violations, most of them centering on gasoline-dispensing equipment and operations of a paint spray booth.

Although the popular Autopia ride is not in violation of any air quality standard, the AQMD has strongly urged Disney to alter the carbon-monoxide spewing engines that power the mini-car attraction, first built in 1955.

“It’s almost a blue haze over Autopia sometimes,” AQMD spokesman Tom Eichhorn noted.

Disneyland has in recent years converted its Jungle Cruise boats, park trams and most other rides and vehicles to a cleaner fuel of compressed natural gas. Conversion of Autopia is under review, Disney spokesman John McClintock said.

“In the greater context of Southern California air quality, it’s difficult to think of the little Autopia cars as a serious contributor to the problem,” McClintock said. “But we look at all the vehicles all the time for cleaner ways to power them, and the Autopia cars are still under study.”

Despite some violations, AQMD officials said they enjoy “a good working relationship with Disney.”

“Disney has had occasional problems, like any facility, but we have always been able to work with them,” the AQMD’s Eichhorn said.

The biggest source of air pollution at the proposed DisneySea resort, however, would come not from what Disney operates, but what Disney attracts: cars. The amusement park giant estimates that at least 70% of its 13 million yearly guests would travel by automobile, the culprit responsible for 90% of the carbon monoxide pumped into the air in the Los Angeles Basin, which has the filthiest air in the nation.

“We need to find a clean and efficient way to move people,” Long Beach Councilman Ray Grabinski said. “If not, we are going to have all these folks going into one congested area in the morning and filling in the pollution gaps between rush hours.”

Because Disney has yet to release details of the proposed resort, it is impossible to project what the air pollution impact might be.

Will any of Disney’s rides and attractions run on gasoline? Will Disney opt to build its own energy plant to power the resort, as it did for Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.? What will be the cumulative effects on local pollution if the Port of Long Beach expands as planned and other proposed downtown projects grow up beside DisneySea? What pollution might the construction from so many new projects bring?

Pollution questions are common to virtually any new development. Whatever the city ultimately builds downtown or in the harbor--whether it be a Disney attraction or a cargo terminal--is bound to pollute. The question is, how much? And like virtually every issue linked to the project that Disney unveiled 16 months ago, the questions far outnumber the answers.

A battalion of consultants has been hired by the city of Long Beach and by Disney to assess the environmental impacts of such a mammoth development, which would include a water-oriented theme park, shops, restaurants, a cruise ship terminal and six hotels.

An environmental impact study scheduled to be completed by next summer is likely to be delayed because Disney is still at the drawing board designing alternatives that might be less environmentally harmful, several officials said.

But figures released by the Walt Disney Co. and the AQMD offer a glimpse, however hypothetical, of just how much smog 13 million tourists a year might bring to Long Beach.

If 70% of Disney’s 13 million guests arrive by car, and the average car carries four passengers, that amounts to an average of more than 6,200 cars coming to the Long Beach shoreline daily.

If each vehicle travels 20 miles round-trip to get there--what the AQMD calls an average car trip--Disney tourists would create about two-thirds as much smog as is currently produced daily by the Long Beach Municipal Airport, considered to be one of the city’s larger polluters.

Such a comparison is certainly rough because Disney has not yet calculated the average trip a tourist car might make to Long Beach, and the company refuses to release such figures compiled for Disneyland. Neither does the comparison take into account AQMD standards requiring cleaner burning cars over the next decade, when the Disney park would be built.

David Malmuth, a vice president for Disney Development Co., dismissed any preliminary smog estimates as “completely meaningless.”

“We are doing a detailed traffic analysis that will be reviewed by the city and the port and then by other agencies to assess air quality impacts,” Malmuth said. “Until that time, I think it is not helpful to speculate.”

Environmental consultants hired by the city say their air quality studies are in limbo because Disney’s resort plans are still not firm.

Meanwhile, the city continues to court Disney to build its tourist mecca in Long Beach rather than Anaheim, the alternate site being considered. Disney has also proposed a $3-billion expansion of Disneyland. The Disneyland Resort would include a theme park rimmed by three new hotels.

Negotiations between Disney and Long Beach recently enteredtheir second year.

What is already clear, however, is that traffic will be the main pollution source if a tourist attraction of Disney’s grandeur is built. And some critics were disappointed that the company, known for its imagination, has not been more creative in dealing with it.

“If I don’t see some dramatic positive impact on regional transportation from this project, I am going to have real problems seeing the benefits,” Councilman Grabinski said. “So far, Disney is not being very futuristic.”

Disney officials say they are considering a parking structure with speed ramps that would funnel traffic from the ground directly to the appropriate parking level, eliminating the slow spiraling and idling that air quality experts say is a major source of smog.

An electric monorail has been suggested, but only to move guests from one side of the resort to the other. And at a projected cost of $30 million a mile, Disney is not even sure it would build that, Malmuth said.

“Of course Disney is focusing on air quality, but we do not have specifics at this point,” said Lynn Sonntag, senior counsel for the Walt Disney Co. “Some people don’t realize how long it takes to plan a theme park. We’re really in the infancy stages.”

Disney officials point out that if the cars were not going to DisneySea they would likely be driving somewhere else, contributing to smog anyway.

But the concentrated exhaust from so many vehicles at the downtown shoreline is bound to have an effect on air quality in Long Beach, where levels of pollution occasionally rank among the highest in Southern California.

A study published last spring in the American Journal of Public Health showed serious lung damage among Long Beach residents--especially children--which experts said was probably the result of long-term exposure to air pollution. The study measured the lung capacity of nearly 500 residents of the California Heights-Bixby Knolls area over an 11-year period.

Prevailing winds pick up emissions from Wilmington and Carson refineries and mix them with fumes from the Long Beach Municipal Airport and the Long Beach and San Diego freeways, creating an unhealthy soup, experts say.

Overall, data from a monitoring station in western Long Beach showed that the city has a less serious pollution problem than its inland neighbors, according to the AQMD. And studies show the air has improved significantly in Long Beach since the early 1970s, with the air quality exceeding federal standards on only a handful of days each year.

Still, residents who live downwind of oil refineries, power plants and other emission sources may suffer heavy exposure to pollution on some days, officials said.

Remarked Roger Detels, a UCLA professor of epidemiology and the principal investigator in the smog study: “If I had kids in Long Beach, I’d be worried about them.”