Suit Seeks Clean-Air Rules for Oil Rigs : Environment: The federal government is accused of delaying issuance of the regulations for offshore drilling platforms.

A public interest environmental law firm on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit aimed at forcing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue air pollution control regulations for oil rigs operating off the coast of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

“We lost our patience,” said Marc Chytilo, chief counsel of the Environmental Defense Center in Santa Barbara, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles.

Separately on Tuesday, Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan announced that the 87 remaining tracts off the coast of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties will be removed from the Bush Administration’s new five-year plan for federal oil and gas leasing on the outer continental shelf.

The lawsuit grew out of 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, which required the EPA to publish the air pollution control regulations by Nov. 15, 1991.

The regulations were published, but Chytilo said the federal agency has been delaying their implementation because it is reviewing final public comments on them.

“It could go on forever,” Chytilo said. The rules, he said, “have become highly politicized, causing delays in promulgation.”

Richard Baldwin, air pollution control officer for Ventura County, said the Santa Barbara law firm was justifiably concerned over the delay in putting the regulations into effect.

“They’re really late,” he said. “I would like to understand the reasons.”

Baldwin said EPA officials recently told him that the regulations would be in place by June or July. But, he said, they “could get hung up for months” because of political debates within the Bush Administration.

When the Clear Air Act became law in 1990, officials in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties viewed it as a major victory in their efforts to bring offshore oil operations under the same strict air pollution standards that apply to industries onshore.

Bill Glenn, a spokesman for the EPA in San Francisco, said the agency intends to implement the regulations “as soon as possible.”

“We have been aiming for July,” he said.

Glenn said the EPA “has been working hard to build a consensus between environmental groups, the oil industry, and federal, state and local agencies. It’s simply taking longer, but we believe it is a beneficial approach.”

Oil and gas operations on the outer continental shelf emit air pollutants in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and the Los Angeles air basin that would thwart the Clean Air Act from reaching its objectives, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit’s request for injunctive relief is scheduled to be heard by U.S. District Judge William D. Keller in 20 days, Chytilo said.

The 87 tracts removed from the Administration’s new five-year plan are in federal waters throughout the Santa Barbara Channel and Santa Maria Basin. Totaling about 500,000 acres, they will now be protected from oil and gas drilling for at least the next five years.

The tracts had been left vulnerable to development in 1990 when President Bush put the rest of the federal government’s offshore tracts along the state’s coastline off limits until 2000.

“I am very happy that the Administration agrees with me that the environmental sensitivity of these areas deserves greater consideration than it has received,” said Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura), who had fought lease sales off the California coast.

“Taking these areas off the table for leasing consideration makes good environmental sense and good common sense,” Lagomarsino said. “This is a big victory for the Central Coast.”