AQMD Unveils Revamped Plan to Wipe Out Smog : Pollution: Focus is on credits, incentives for industry. The 15-year program also targets traffic emissions.

Reflecting a clean-air strategy billed as more business-friendly and less far-fetched than previous efforts, the Southland’s air-quality agency Monday unveiled its newest plan to return blue skies to the nation’s smoggiest region by 2010.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District’s plan--its third in five years--contains 89 steps proposed for the next 15 years, consisting of 41 that target pollution from industries, 17 aimed at cars and trucks, and 10 for vehicles such as trains and airliners, and 21 measures to improve traffic patterns.

About one-third of the ideas are new, with an unprecedented focus on credits and other market incentives to encourage industries to find their own ways to clean up smog.

The agency says the plan, if successfully implemented, would meet federal health standards for every major air pollutant in the region, despite a projected 40% population increase. About 75% of all smog-causing emissions would be eliminated--5% each year. “We think that Congress and the Legislature (have) every reason to be optimistic that we can meet the goals they have set for us,” said Barry Wallerstein, AQMD deputy executive officer.

The agency believes that its new air quality management plan is more practical and flexible than the earlier versions.

“Most of the items in this plan most people would find to be very realistic. You can’t please everyone, but I think most people will believe we have a lot more realism in it than perhaps we’ve had in the past,” said Henry Wedaa, a Yorba Linda councilman who is chairman of the AQMD board.

For the next three months, businesses, environmentalists, civic leaders and others in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties will comb through the three-foot-thick draft, with the debate likely to focus on a key point: Where does most of the pain fall? The AQMD is facing pressure to fairly balance the economic burden among big industries and motorists, small businesses and consumers.

The AQMD’s governing board is scheduled to vote on the program in July after a series of public hearings. Under federal law, the AQMD and the state must have an approved clean-air plan by November.

Because this is the AQMD’s third version of a 20-year clean-air plan, everyone involved is wondering about the chance of success this time. AQMD officials hope the latest plan will replace a sweeping series of rules that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed in February under a court order to clean up the air in the Los Angeles Basin. At the time, the EPA challenged the AQMD and the state to come up with their own smog-control options.

To improve the chances of success, some innovative transportation ideas were dropped from the plan at the last minute, including imposing pollution fees on motorists caught speeding and raising the legal driving age to 18.

Those ideas were proposed by the Southern California Assn. of Governments, but Wallerstein called them political lightning rods that were far-fetched and would distract from more achievable measures.

The basic framework of the plan is familiar. Several dozen rules to be adopted by the AQMD or state Air Resources Board would require companies to use the most advanced technology to cut emissions from factories, small businesses, cars and fuels.

But the thrust of how to regulate industry shifts dramatically. Market incentives--just a footnote in the 1991 plan--now are a cornerstone of the AQMD’s strategy. The plan contains a series of credits, rebates and fees to encourage cleaner practices in place of traditional regulations.

The plan also sets aggressive goals for use of advanced technology in cars. By 2010, 78% of passenger cars would be fueled by methanol or other low-emission fuels, while 22% would run on electricity or fuel cells. Enforcing such mandates falls under the jurisdiction of the state ARB, which is facing unprecedented pressure from the auto industry to scale back its existing rules.

Also included are a trio of fees that are certain to raise howls of protest from motorists: car registration fees based on miles driven, new taxes on fuel and freeway tollbooths that would charge motorists fees during high-congestion hours.

Los Angeles attorney Robert Wyman, who represents oil and aerospace companies, said industries will look especially closely at whether the proposals are tough enough in getting high-polluting vehicles and solo commuters off the roads. Wyman said he hopes to see some “innovative transportation controls” to help ease the impact on local industries.

Much of the debate about sharing the smog burden focuses on a new state finding that the volume of pollution emitted by cars has been dramatically underestimated. The Air Resources Board estimates cars emit 60% more hydrocarbons and twice as much carbon monoxide as previously thought.

Andrew Hirsch, the Southern California Gas Co.’s senior external affairs manager, said the AQMD is “playing a shell game” by avoiding the new emissions numbers in its plan to underplay the role cars have in creating smog. He said more painful changes for commuters are needed than those contained in the plan.

“It will be hard to do. It will take some dramatic policies to reduce those emissions,” Hirsch said. “It may mean changes in the ways we commute to work. It may mean . . . no-drive days. It’s more than reducing tailpipe emissions. The idea is to stop the driving.”

Much of the plan pertaining to industry is modeled after RECLAIM, the AQMD’s newly launched “smog market,” which sets pollution limits for industries and allows them to buy, sell and trade credits, a strategy popular with big business.

The plan calls for expanding the pollution-trading program in 1998 to 1,200 companies that emit hydrocarbons--petroleum-based fumes that are a main component of smog. Included would be major aerospace firms and other companies that use large amounts of paints and solvents.

Under attack by the Legislature and business groups that want to dismantle the agency, the AQMD of 1994 is more focused on consensus-building than the agency that created its original clean-air plan in 1989.

Jack Broadbent, the AQMD’s director of planning, said the new plan “provides a lot more flexibility” for local businesses.

“We learned we can provide industry the target and they will provide the ingenuity to get there,” Broadbent said.

“This (plan) is more business-friendly,” Wedaa said. “We have been stressing that we should treat the businesses as our customers and we want to have--as much as possible--reasonably happy customers.”

One of the most critical components of the plan--an analysis of the cost and social impact--will not be released until late May. In the past, the AQMD estimated that achieving clean air in the Southland will cost $3 billion to $6 billion a year.

Even though it has no jurisdiction over interstate sources of pollution such as planes, trains and ships, the AQMD plan contains aggressive proposals to target them. Adopting and enforcing those measures, however, would be left in the hands of the EPA.

The proposals to target planes, trains and ships--sources of smog that have never been regulated before--are extremely unpopular. Area businesses worry they will make the Los Angeles region less competitive than the rest of the country.

“We don’t think it’s fair to leave sources uncontrolled,” Wallerstein said. “If it’s fair game for passenger cars, it’s certainly fair game for dirty diesel trains.”

Some of the other new proposed measures in the plan include:

* Use of “smart” cars and highways that electronically ensure traffic flows smoothly by selecting the best route.

* Tree plantings.

* Credits or rebates for households and businesses that install energy-efficient, low-emitting equipment such as water heaters.

* Control of dust from unpaved roads and parking lots.

* Emission reductions from construction activities.

* Use of advanced technologies in shuttle transit.

* Building of infrastructure--such as plugs in garages and recharge stations--to support electric cars. A meeting Monday in Van Nuys to explain the plan to the public was lightly attended, but similar sessions continue throughout the four counties today through next Monday.

The AQMD will hold its next public meeting today at 9:30 a.m. at the Mission Inn in Riverside and at 2 p.m. at the Red Lion in Ontario. The largest sessions are expected to be at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Davidson Conference Center in Los Angeles and at 7 p.m Wednesday at the Newport Beach Marriott.