AQMD Votes to Abandon 24 Smog Rules : Environment: The district’s decision will give staff time to work on a new pollution trading system, which will allow companies that cut emissions below required levels to sell credits to other businesses.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District voted Friday to suspend preparation of 24 smog rules to allow staff to work on a revolutionary new pollution trading system.

The move came amid widespread criticism by environmental groups and fears by some district board members that the region could be left without sufficient pollution control measures if the new market-based system does not work.

In response to concern from the business community, the board also approved language promising that it would only return to the abandoned smog rules to fill in gaps that could result if the new system were not approved by next July.

Under the new system, polluters who reduce their emissions beyond required levels could sell right-to-pollute credits to other companies, who would then be free to choose whatever kind of emissions equipment they wanted in order to meet air quality regulations.

If the necessary equipment to reduce pollution were prohibitively expensive, the company could decide instead to buy credits from less polluting firms.

The idea is to allow individual companies that buy credits to exceed certain pollution requirements as long as the overall air quality goal for the region is met. The system, scheduled to go into effect by 1994, would replace “command and control” regulations, which specify the sorts of equipment and materials factories must use to meet air standards.

The new system would apply to more than 2,000 facilities that emit more than four tons a year of reactive hydrocarbons, sulfur oxides or nitrogen oxides--the primary ingredients of smog. The 24 proposed rules put on hold also were designed to reduce those pollutants.

The companies that would be regulated under the new system include manufacturing plants that use paints, solvents and other polluting materials and factories that burn fuel in boilers, heaters and furnaces, such as refineries, food processors and breweries.

Mary Nichols, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, warned the board that scrapping existing plans for regulations was premature for a system she called a “grand, new experiment.”

Tim Little, executive director of the Coalition for Clean Air, said he was particularly concerned that the trading program could result in additional toxic emissions for some communities. His group is urging the board to phase in the system to see how it works before abandoning other kinds of regulatory plans.

But the board, while expressing many of the same concerns as the critics, voted 7 to 2 to forge ahead with plans for the new system anyway. Board members Larry Berg and Sabrina Schiller dissented.

A spokesman for the district said the work on the planned rules had to be suspended so that the staff could turn its attention to the pollution trading system.

In other action, the board decided to give staff 30 days to respond to a special commission’s report that recommends a variety of controversial ways to make the air district more responsive to business concerns.

Four members of that commission represented environmental or public health groups, and each of those organizations on Friday disavowed the report.

Previously, the commissioner representing one of those groups, the American Lung Assn., had endorsed the report in an interview. But a spokeswoman for the organization told the board Friday that he had been out of the country when the final report was written, and after having read it, he could not endorse its conclusions.

The commission, dominated by business representatives, has recommended that the board create an ombudsman for the business community and suspend implementation of a ride-share program until further review. That program requires employers to provide incentives, such as bus passes or free parking, to ensure that more of their employees car-pool.

The board turned down a motion by Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich to endorse the concept of an ombudsman before the staff review, and some board members indicated that they would be unwilling to support all of the commission’s suggestions.