Broad U.S. Plan to Clean Up Air in State Is Unveiled : Pollution: Administration blueprint would target ships and all commercial airlines for the first time. The EPA will hold public debate on the proposed rules.

In a sweeping strategy that moves further to clean up California’s smoggiest cities than ever before, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday revealed almost 100 clean-air measures it plans to mandate for the Los Angeles-Orange County area, Sacramento and Ventura County over the next decade.

The long-awaited plan--prompted by a court order--is the Clinton Administration’s version of what bold and sometimes painful steps must be taken to bring healthful air to the four-county Southern California region by 2010 and to Ventura County and the Sacramento area by 2005.

In a 2,700-page array of highly detailed federal proposals, virtually every source of pollution is targeted: cars, trains, airlines, ships and trucks. Lawn mowers, tractors, recreational vehicles and motorcycles. Large factories and small businesses. Paints and pesticides. In all, the proposed rules encompass 15 million people--half of California’s population--who are exposed to the nation’s dirtiest air.

“We’re going to have a complicated web of strategies that affect truly every aspect of life here in California. You put all that together and it’s a pretty enormous impact on the region,” said Robert Wyman, a Los Angeles attorney who represents a variety of oil companies, utilities, aerospace firms, chemical plants and engine manufacturers on air quality issues.

It is the first time the EPA has stepped squarely into the quagmire of identifying ways to clean up California’s air. The EPA, however, is proposing the rules only under duress, after losing in a 10-year legal odyssey. The lawsuit was initiated by Los Angeles-area environmentalists to force the EPA to step in when local air quality regulators failed to comply with the 1977 federal Clean Air Act.

While a majority of the EPA’s blueprint is fundamentally the same as measures already under development by local and state officials, some are new and highly controversial.

Most notably, sources of pollution that have never before been targeted would be regulated, including all commercial airlines, ships that dock at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, recreational boats and passenger and freight trains.

Since the federal government has sole control over many pollution sources, the clean-air plan is the most comprehensive one to emerge during the two decades that the Los Angeles Basin has struggled to comply with the nation’s clean-air laws.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner signed the proposed rules Monday night, and the agency has kicked off six months of public debate, including a long series of forums in California this spring and hearings scheduled for July.

Under the terms of a court order, the EPA must adopt final regulations within one year, and the agency must enforce the provisions or be vulnerable to more lawsuits.

“This is the end of the line,” Felicia Marcus, the EPA’s western regional administrator, said Tuesday. “We are under obligation to not just come up with a plan, but all the regulations, the whole program, as opposed to being theoretical. What you have here for the first time is an overall comprehensive picture of what it will take to give California clean air.”

Officials at the South Coast Air Quality Management District and state Air Resources Board--who are under increasing pressure from the business community to scale back anti-smog rules--said they welcome the federal help. For years, they have urged aggressive action from the EPA in regulating sources such as airliners that only the federal government can control.

“I hope,” said James Lents, the AQMD’s executive officer, “that it at least sends a signal that what we’re trying to do here in cleaning the air is driven by federal law.”

In its plan, the federal agency avoided measures considered Draconian that it once had threatened to impose on the Los Angeles region, such as gasoline rationing, no-driving days for motorists and taxes based on miles driven.

The plan also does not attempt to regulate California development, land use or population issues, and mostly avoids targeting consumers or motorists directly, saying such steps, if needed, should be undertaken by local and state officials.

Instead, the Administration plan is a series of pollution fees and emissions standards for manufacturers and other businesses, including some novel approaches designed to give them an economic incentive to cut smog.

“Our ultimate goal is public health, and to try to minimize as much as we could the negative impact on the economy and the social fabric of all three areas,” said David Howekamp, chief of air management at the EPA’s regional office.

“These are very difficult measures. We’ve stayed away from gasoline rationing and other measures that are not politically acceptable, but they will still be painful.”

In general, the EPA plan would cut smog-forming gases equally in all three metropolitan regions, at a price roughly estimated by the agency at $3 billion to $6 billion a year. Most of the economic burden would fall on the Los Angeles Basin--Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, Howekamp said.

In Orange County, Henry Wedaa, the Yorba Linda councilman who chairs the AQMD, said he hadn’t read the EPA plan but welcomes new standards for aircraft, trains and boats. “The federal government had reserved to itself the right to regulate these types of things, so we couldn’t do anything to reduce their emissions,” Wedaa said. This forced the AQMD to get more emission reductions through regulation of factories and other so-called stationary sources of air pollution, he added.

But Wedaa had harsh words for the EPA’s decision to include politically unpopular parking regulations that could force employers to pay workers to keep their cars at home. “Parking cash-outs are the wrong way to go,” Wedaa said. “They simply don’t work.”

Orange County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, chairman of the Orange County Transportation Authority and president of the Southern California Assn. of Governments--a six-county regional planning agency--said he had met in December with EPA officials in hopes of “sensitizing” them to the hardship some regulations would have on the already struggling economy.

“Government regulations are one of the frequent reasons businesses and companies give for leaving California,” said Vasquez. “We need to find a middle ground somewhere. . . . Coming in the midst of a bad economy and on the heels of a devastating earthquake . . . business has taken a substantial beating already.”

Environmentalists were pleased Tuesday, mainly because they believe the proposed rules will gradually mean much cleaner cars, buses, trucks and planes in California.

“There’s a lot of talk about reinventing L.A. and if we are going to reinvent L.A.--and we should--then one place we should start is a plan to clean up our air,” said Denny Zane of the Coalition for Clean Air, the Santa Monica-based environmental group whose lawsuit forced the EPA to develop the plan.

Tom Soto, president of the Coalition for Clean Air, called the plan “the most significant proposal on air quality since the adoption of the national Clean Air Act” in 1990.

“On the face of it, it looks very practical and even sort of soothing because it looks like they are seeking integration with local policy. It seems consistent with the goals California already has on the books,” Soto said.

Many business leaders, however, say it would have a tremendous impact on all aspects of California’s economy. They especially fear that proposed regulations on airlines, trucking and commercial ships would restrict interstate commerce and make California less competitive with other states.

“No one can mistake this as a halfhearted proposal,” Wyman said, predicting a lively debate between regulated businesses and the EPA over the next six months.

The airline industry in particular worries about the impact. Some airlines fear they can achieve the proposed pollution limits only by eliminating some flights in the three metropolitan areas--especially in the Southland, where many airlines plan to expand.

Under the proposal, each commercial airline would be allocated an annual pollution limit based on emissions from its planes and ground operations in 1990. Starting in 2001, each airline’s pollution would have to drop 4% to 9% per year. Airlines could choose their own techniques, such as converting baggage loaders and other ground service equipment to alternative fuels.

“We think in terms of transporting people and goods into and out of the Los Angeles area, we are already the most fuel efficient and cleanest form of transportation,” said Chris Chiames of the Air Transport Assn. of America. “There is a limit technologically speaking how much we can achieve, and then you run into that wall of what is a safe operation of an airline.”

Another potentially controversial proposal is a fee on commercial ships that dock in Los Angeles and Long Beach and another fee imposed on those passing within 20 miles of Ventura County’s shoreline, which is the traditional route to Los Angeles. The size of the fee would be based on the amount of pollution each ship emits. Under a worst-case scenario, the fees could total about $16,000 each time a ship docks, the EPA says.

In a defeat for the auto industry, the EPA endorsed the state’s automobile standards, including one requiring 2% of all cars sold in California beginning in 1998 to be powered by electric batteries or an equally exhaust-free source.

In a state proud of an air quality program often hailed as innovative and aggressive, the prospect of the federal government stepping in has been fearsome. But the EPA was apologetic on Tuesday about imposing the plan on California, and Marcus made it clear that local and state officials would remain in control of most anti-smog efforts.

Times staff writer Jeffrey A. Perlman contributed to this story.