Naval Center to Change Schedules to Reduce Smog : Point Mugu: To comply with an air pollution ruling, many employees will work longer shifts and get every other Friday off.

Ventura County’s largest employer, the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at Point Mugu, will dramatically alter its employees’ work schedules next month to help cut smog.

With fewer but longer workdays for 5,379 civilians and sailors who work on base, the Navy hopes to reduce their number of commuting trips--thus reducing the pollutants the employees’ cars release into the air.

The base’s new work schedule is meant to help the Navy comply with a 2-year-old rule by the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District. The rule is designed to push large employers to set up car-pools or pursue other strategies to limit the workplace to roughly three cars for every four employees.

To meet this goal, officially described as a ratio of 1.35 people per vehicle, Point Mugu decided to adopt a new, compressed work schedule that has employees working longer shifts so they take off every other Friday.

“The compressed work schedule would be the equivalent of having all the employees arriving at work without cars once every 10 work days,” said Ron Rogers, employee transportation coordinator for Point Mugu.

Beginning Sept. 6, most Point Mugu employees will abandon the five-day, 40-hour week for a new two-week work cycle. Under the new schedule, Navy employees will work nine-hour days Monday through Thursday, have a day off on the first Friday and work an eight-hour day on the second Friday.

“It is going to be a dramatic new way of doing business around here,” said Rear Adm. William E. Newman, commanding officer of missile testing operations at Point Mugu and three other bases.

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Top Navy brass in Washington were reluctant to permit the change. But Newman, who has vowed that the base will cooperate with local officials, flew to the nation’s capital to press the case.

“We had to arm-wrestle Washington for a while,” Newman said, and ultimately a three-star admiral had to sign off on the change. “There was quite a debate out there at Naval Air Systems Command. I’ve assured them that we will be doing the same job for them we always have.”

Point Mugu tests missiles, radar and a host of other high-tech equipment carried by tactical Navy aircraft.

And Newman stresses that the base’s crew of engineers and test pilots will work through Fridays, or any other day of the week, if required to by the needs of the Navy.

“If we get into a fighting war, we will be doing some overtime,” he said.

In the meantime, the schedule change will “definitely” help lessen Ventura County air pollution, said Judy Linhart Willens, a county transportation specialist.

Cars “have a fairly large impact in this end of the county . . . about 50% of our problem,” Willens said. Even auto exhaust that is blown away from the area on sea breezes often winds up trapped in Simi Valley, Ojai, Piru and sometimes the Santa Rosa area of Camarillo, she said.

For this reason, many of the county’s 600 largest employers--those with 100 or more workers--have already begun complying with the smog-reduction rule, known as Rule 210. Employers with 50 or more workers, added to the rule in January, are beginning to comply, too, she said.

“The employers that have gone ahead and supported this thing are showing progress,” Willens said. “We’re trying to change travel behavior, and people are starting to think twice before starting their cars.”

Gaining the cooperation of Point Mugu has been a big boost to the program.

Not everyone at the missile-testing facility will change schedules, though. The so-called essential staff on base--such as fire, police, aviation support and public works employees--will keep their regular schedules.

But Point Mugu brass expect to make only a few exceptions to the new schedule, which also affects a Navy weapons testing site at China Lake, said Rogers, the base’s transportation coordinator.

“I think we have taken pride in this organization as being a good member of the Ventura County community,” Rogers said. “We want to support the county and be a good neighbor.”

Adm. Newman pointed out that the Navy also benefits from the change.

“We are going to save more than $1 million a year just in reduced utility bills--powering down the offices, turning off the lights.”

One Point Mugu department has already been experimenting with the new schedule for the past year--the 100-member human resources department.

But Point Mugu officials decided to put off expanding the schedule to cover the entire base until the Navy had finished the complicated task of consolidating Point Mugu and China Lake with weapons test labs at Albuquerque and White Sands, N.M., under one command.

Rogers said: “The word on the street is most of the employees favor the (schedule), particularly because of the extra day off. Also, the folks who are conscious about the ecology and the environment like it for that reason as well.”

Other large employers such as Amgen in Newbury Park and the county itself have already begun meeting Rule 210 by switching to a four-day workweek and pushing programs that advocate car-pooling and biking to work.

Oxnard closes its City Hall at noon on Fridays, and the Simi Valley Police Department switched to a compressed work schedule.

Rule 210 is still too new for Air Pollution Control District officials to say how much it has affected Ventura County’s air quality, said Bill Mount, planning manager for the air pollution control district. Such trends must be plotted over several years, taking into account weather, population and other factors that affect smog, he said.

“It will help,” Mount said of the Navy’s participation. “I mean, every little bit helps.”

Because of stricter smog controls, peak ozone levels have dropped by 35% in the past 10 years, he said, adding, “People are breathing much cleaner air today than they were 10 or 20 years ago in the county.”