Court Orders Tougher Smog Plan From EPA

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency must draw up clean air plans for the stubbornly smoggy Los Angeles Basin and Ventura and Sacramento counties, plans that could far surpass current cleanup efforts.

The EPA said the ruling could force stringent new controls on nearly all pollution sources, resulting in much cleaner industries, commercial operations and consumer products, and faster development of low-emission motor vehicles and alternative fuels. It even could change the way freight companies operate nationally by making airplanes, trains and trucks comply with stiffer air quality regulations.

Without dissent, the justices refused Monday to hear an appeal by the EPA, which contended that such federal plans would not only duplicate local efforts to clean up the air but also “threaten to result in widespread inconvenience and hardship for millions of California citizens,” including possible “no-drive days.”

“The potential is there for great economic dislocation,” David Howekamp, director of the EPA’s air and toxics division for the region including California, said in an interview. “We’ll try to minimize it. . . . It could become very costly for certain businesses to meet the requirements, whatever they turn out to be. Businesses could choose to leave.”

But environmentalists and officials of the South Coast Air Quality Management District praised the ruling, calling such claims politically motivated and grossly exaggerated. They said the EPA plans--which have not yet been written--will “fill the gaps” in state and local air-quality management plans.

“This is a tremendous step forward for the health and environment of Southern California,” said Tom Soto, president of the Coalition for Clean Air, which filed the suit against the EPA.

In July, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the EPA to set “an expeditious schedule” for imposing a plan to reduce ozone and carbon monoxide pollution in the South Coast Air Basin.

The basin, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, has the nation’s highest ozone concentrations and most severe carbon monoxide problem. At ground level, ozone is a major component of smog and can cause breathing problems. Carbon monoxide aggravates heart and lung disease.

A companion ruling by the Supreme Court on Monday also requires new federal plans for Ventura County, which ranks third in the nation in the number of annual ozone violations, and Sacramento County, which ranks seventh.

Howekamp said the EPA will meet with plaintiffs from the South Coast Air Basin and Ventura and Sacramento counties to work out a schedule for drafting the required federal plans.

In creating a federal plan, all possibilities for cleaning up nagging air pollution problems--including those measures labeled Draconian by environmentalists and business representatives--will be considered.

The EPA had earlier suggested “no-drive days” as a way to lower harmful automobile emissions. Howekamp said such a drastic solution is much less likely than it was when suggested in 1990, but “we have to comply with the court order and decide if we need it. We have to factor in that it is very unpopular.”

The AQMD is hoping that the federal plan will impose strict restrictions on construction and farm equipment and interstate commerce--which the local smog agency cannot regulate.

For example, federal officials can regulate airplanes, trains, trucks and other vehicles of interstate commerce that are outside the control of local and state officials. The AQMD contends that such traffic significantly increases the area’s air pollution.

“By controlling (such) sources . . . the EPA could cut nitrogen oxide emissions in our basin by 4.7% and reactive organic compounds by 1.6%,” said James M. Lents, AQMD executive officer. Nitrogen oxides and reactive organic compounds are the building blocks of ozone.

Lents said that by spreading the pain of improving air quality among these other sources, local businesses will be saved further regulation. Manufacturing and transportation executives were studying the court ruling Monday and declined comment until they could see a detailed plan from the EPA.

But Howekamp said there is no guarantee that local businesses will not be affected by the upcoming federal air plan. “It’s going to help that these other types of sources that haven’t been strongly regulated will now have to contribute. But it’s not a guarantee that other sources that are already regulated won’t also have to contribute.”

The Clean Air Act of 1970 required federal officials to monitor the progress of state efforts to reduce air pollution. The law specifically said the EPA administrator “shall promulgate a federal implementation plan within two years” after a state plan has been rejected as inadequate.

Clean Air Act amendments of 1977 required all areas of the country to submit plans to the EPA within a few years, demonstrating that they could attain federal standards for ozone and carbon monoxide by 1987.

Because of the “massive emission reductions needed for attainment” in several areas of California, the EPA said, state and local air quality officials acknowledged that they could not meet the clean-air deadline. The EPA took no action at that time, so several environmental groups took the agency to court.

The EPA settled the cases and agreed to write a federal plan for cleaning up the South Coast Air Basin and Ventura and Sacramento counties, Howekamp said. In 1988, state plans for the three regions again were rejected, but the Bush Administration delayed imposing a federal plan.

Then-EPA Administrator William Reilly noted that Congress was in the midst of re-crafting the entire Clean Air Act. After much debate and compromise, Congress passed an amended Clean Air Act in 1990 that set new national standards for urban air. But the law did not repeal the earlier requirement that EPA impose a federal plan within two years after a state plan was rejected.

Initially, a federal judge ruled that the amended law gave the communities a chance to start anew. But in July, the appeals court said the EPA had to come up with its own plan.

Nonetheless, attorneys for the outgoing Bush Administration submitted a strongly worded appeal urging the high court to reverse the order. It “is likely to cause substantial disruption of economic planning and air quality control in the Los Angeles Basin,” Solicitor Gen. Kenneth Starr said.

Lawyers for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce agreed and said it is “difficult to imagine a worse time to impose duplicate environmental regulations on Southern California businesses.”

Savage reported from Washington and La Ganga from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Michael Parrish also contributed.