County Welcomes 2-Year Postponement of Smog Plan Measures

Ventura County air pollution officials Friday hailed an agreement between the Clinton Administration and environmental groups that postpones strict federal clean-air measures for most of Southern California until 1997.

Although the agreement does not specifically mention Ventura County, officials with the Environmental Protection Agency said the smog plan scheduled to take effect here Feb. 14 will also be delayed.

“This agreement will give us the breathing room we need to get our own plan through the EPA,” said Richard Baldwin, the county’s top air pollution officer. “That two years is very helpful.”

Baldwin said the two-year delay in implementing the Federal Implementation Plan, or FIP, will also give the EPA time to review and possibly accept an alternate clean-air plan crafted by state officials.

“Both the state plan and the federal plan would reduce emissions by an equivalent amount,” Baldwin said. “The difference is that the state plan is more cost-effectiveand would have less impact on businesses.”

Indeed, state and local business leaders fear the federal plan would be disastrous for the economy and have been working closely with local air quality officials to come up with alternative proposals.

“We’re grateful” for the postponement, said Carolyn Leavens, president of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., which helped draft a local alternative. “It gives us a chance to get the state plan in operation.”

Leavens, a citrus and avocado grower, said the state smog plan would be “less difficult on businesses.”

“The FIP would have been deadly,” she said. “It would have clobbered businesses and devastated the county.”

But not everyone is pleased with the EPA’s agreement with the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Clean Air and the Sierra Club.

Attorney Marc Chytilo, who represents Citizens to Preserve the Ojai, which successfully sued the federal government in 1988 to make sure that clean-air standards were enforced, questioned whether the agency has the legal authority to delay implementing its program in Ventura County.

Chytilo said the Ojai group believes the EPA needs its legal consent before the postponement can take effect. Members plan to meet with EPA officials next week to discuss such an agreement.

Chytilo said the group wants to make sure that the federal plan will not affect the county’s 2005 deadline for meeting federal anti-smog standards. He said it does not matter whether that is done with a federal or state plan.

“Our objective is clean air,” he said. “If we can get there with Plan B, then we support it. If we can get there without economic disruption, of course, we’re in favor of that.”

As part of its agreement announced Friday, the EPA will still consider national emission standards for aircraft, ships, trains and interstate trucks that could assist California and other states in meeting federal clean air standards.

“That’s also good news,” Baldwin said. “We’ve got to have some federal controls. And only the EPA can regulate those sources.”

Although she welcomed the postponement, county Supervisor Susan Lacey said the EPA agreement does not change the requirement that Ventura achieve healthful air within 10 years.

“We still have to do all the things necessary to clean up our air, but we won’t have quite the menace at our backs,” she said. “We can do it in a more calm (manner).”

One of 43 urban areas nationwide that do not meet federal air quality standards, Ventura County is under federal court order to clean its air in a decade. More than 80 tons of smog is produced in the county each day. The county fares worst for ozone, a colorless gas that is a principal component of smog.

The county has made great strides in reducing smog over the past 20 years. In 1974, the county’s air quality failed to meet federal standards 122 days, contrasted with 13 days a year ago.

Federal standards allow ozone concentrations to exceed 0.120 parts per million on no more than three days during a three-year period.

Baldwin said the county has begun tightly regulating most of the pollution sources under its control, including emissions from businesses and industries such as manufacturing operations, power plants, roofers, auto body shops and others.

In spite of the EPA agreement, Baldwin said the county will continue to move forward with its own efforts to reduce emissions.

More than half of all the county’s smog comes from motor vehicles. And with Baldwin’s urging, the Board of Supervisors this week agreed to back laws that allow the county to set up two or three large smog inspection stations, replacing more than 200 smaller independent smog-test businesses.

Baldwin said studies have shown that about half of the vehicles that pass smog-check inspections in the state had faulty inspections. He said centralized inspections would greatly reduce the number of faulty inspections because inspections would be more closely monitored.

* SMOG RULES

Wilson and Riordan criticize EPA’s delay. A26