Court Orders Tighter Curbs on L.A. Smog

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was ordered by a federal appellate court Wednesday to write a clean air plan for the Los Angeles region that could limit operations of airplanes and trains as well as ban driving one day a week.

Restrictions on interstate transportation, which do not fall under the authority of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, are the most likely result of the 3-1 decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, EPA official David P. Howekamp said.

“We’re in a state of shock,” said Howekamp, air and toxics division chief for the EPA’s Western region.

The Venice-based Coalition for Clean Air and the Sierra Club sought the appellate order because the EPA had never put into effect a 1990 plan, prepared after the agency agreed to a settlement in a similar lawsuit. The plan was to have been implemented by Feb. 28, 1991.

That 1990 plan included the provision that would prohibit driving one day each week. “Whether that would survive is problematic,” Howekamp said.

The EPA resisted implementing its plan because it felt it was unnecessary in light of revisions to the federal Clean Air Act that Congress was considering in 1990. Howekamp said Wednesday that it is unclear whether the 1990 plan must be imposed as written or whether a new plan can be drawn up.

“I just don’t know. We were planning on winning this suit, “ he said. Howekamp also said he did not know whether the EPA would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If there is no appeal to the Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles must set “an expeditious schedule” for an EPA plan to take effect, Appellate Judge William A. Norris wrote.

An EPA plan is supposed to fill gaps in pollution reductions required by the AQMD, which has prepared a controversial regional clean air program often criticized by industry as onerous and by environmental organizations as too weak.

The EPA had previously agreed to abide by the outcome in the Los Angeles area case for Ventura County and the Sacramento metropolitan area as well. Howekamp said he does not believe federal clean air plans have ever been proposed for those areas, but their less severe air quality problems mean less dramatic pollution fighting measures would be necessary.

In the Los Angeles region, the most smog-choked area in the nation, sources of pollution that are out of reach of regional authorities but under federal control--such as interstate transport--are significant contributors to the foul air.

Such forms of transportation are responsible for 13% of the nitrogen oxides and 6% of the hydrocarbons released daily, AQMD officials said. Nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons combine in strong sunlight to form ozone, the major component of urban smog.

In comparison, factories and utilities contribute about 17% of nitrogen oxides and 19% of hydrocarbons. Cars and trucks, however, account for 61% of nitrogen oxides and 44% of hydrocarbons, as well as 88% of carbon monoxide.

The 1990 EPA plan called for limiting emissions at each airport in the region, Howekamp said. “It was up to each how to achieve that, by technology, by limiting flights, by limiting ground operations,” he said. “It wasn’t very popular with the airlines.”

The 1990 plan required similar limits on train emissions throughout the area under AQMD jurisdiction--Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. There has been much controversy locally over whether to delay commuter rail lines until electric trains can be purchased, with some arguing that the new diesel trains could worsen pollution even if traffic congestion improved.

The EPA plan also recommended requiring new technology for ships to minimize their emissions, Howekamp said.

“This could be a real relief package,” AQMD spokesman Tom Eichhorn said of the transport proposals. “If the federal government does its share, we won’t have to go back to our businesses to get even further reductions” in pollution to meet clean air standards.

Tim Little, executive director of the Coalition for Clean Air, hailed Wednesday’s order as “a victory for every pair of lungs” in the affected regions.

In Ventura County, environmentalists also welcomed the ruling. “There is now federal authority that will apply directly in Ventura County to control sources of air pollution that the county itself wouldn’t have been able to do before,” said Marc Chytilo, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Center in Santa Barbara.

Times staff writer Joanna Miller contributed to this article.