U.S. Unveils Scaled-Back Clean-Air Plan : Pollution: Proposal includes ideas from Mayor Riordan and business. But it won’t take effect unless state fails to reduce smog.

Casting aside an array of unpopular proposals to clean up California’s smoggy skies, the Clinton Administration on Tuesday unveiled a dramatically scaled back clean-air plan that incorporates many ideas suggested by business and civic leaders.

Although the weakened final version released Tuesday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency might never take effect, it still holds the threat of rules covering a variety of businesses, could cost several billion dollars per year, and affect nearly half of California’s population--the 15 million residents of the four-county Los Angeles Basin and Ventura and Sacramento counties.

“We dropped out all the things that people really hated,” said EPA Western Regional Administrator Felicia Marcus. “This (new plan) reflects a year’s worth of collaborative and intense involvement from business, local government and the environmental community.”

Forced to take over smog planning after losing a decade-long legal battle with California environmentalists, top EPA officials say their plan--which was proposed in draft form a year ago--serves mainly as a backstop in case state and local authorities fail to impose adequate measures to clean up pollution. None of the federal measures would take effect before May, 1997.

EPA officials said they expect to approve an alternative smog strategy created by California officials before the federal plan takes effect. In addition, EPA officials said they will not oppose legislation in Congress to block the federal plan.

Prominent state and local leaders, including Gov. Pete Wilson and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, considered the EPA’s original measures so onerous and economically destructive that they launched a yearlong campaign that played a role in the Clinton Administration’s decision to revise the plan.

The EPA dropped the most criticized items: Fees on ships that dock at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, a one-stop limit on out-of-state trucks in the Los Angeles Basin, a 35% to 45% reduction in emissions from commercial airlines, a mandate that Ventura County and Sacramento industries cut emissions 45%, and weekly “no-drive days” on Sacramento highways.

While many of those provisions were replaced with less stringent pollution limits, several sources of smog--small aircraft, boats and dairy farms--were let completely off the hook because EPA officials could not come up with sensible, economic ways to clean up their emissions. Major reprieves were given to the Los Angeles Basin’s airlines and ports--two industries that community and business leaders, especially Riordan, rallied to protect. While the airlines and harbors still face some rules, the EPA scaled back the mandates dramatically.

“It certainly is a major relief,” said Richard Kettler, senior attorney for the Airline Transport Assn., which led the airlines’ discussions with the EPA. “It sounds like it takes a lot of our concerns into consideration. . . . It will be very challenging and certainly not without pain, but it is pretty favorable.”

Flights at Los Angeles International, John Wayne, Burbank, Long Beach and Ontario airports won’t be cut as airlines feared. Instead, carriers must gradually convert their fleets of baggage tractors and other ground equipment to electric power by 2004. Aircraft remain unregulated in the plan even though they are considered a major source of smog.

The sweeping federal implementation plan, or FIP, still covers most businesses and transportation modes that foul the air, including cars, trucks, farm tractors, trains, construction equipment, large factories and small businesses.

Environmentalist Dennis Zane called it a major victory to finally get a federal smog plan for California, saying that without the pressure of federal intervention, the state would be reluctant to get tough enough on smog. He dubbed it a “kinder, gentler” version that, like the state’s plan, is not aggressive in tackling some of the worst polluters, especially diesel trucks and construction equipment.

“It is far more moderate than the accusations of economic destruction that have been bandied about by the politicians in the national spotlight,” said Zane, executive director of the Coalition for Clean Air, the environmental group that won the federal court order that forced the EPA plan.

“The real question for us now is whether it lives up to the objective of being effective enough to clean our air,” he said.

Because California failed for 16 years to develop aggressive anti-smog plans mandated by the 1977 Clean Air Act, the federal government was ordered to implement rules to achieve health standards in the Los Angeles Basin by 2010 and in Ventura and Sacramento counties by 2005.

Once all parts of the state plan are approved by the EPA, federal officials say they will step back and let the state implement its own rules, except for those covering national transportation. The EPA set itself an aggressive pace Tuesday for initiating controversial new national pollution standards for diesel trucks, trains and construction and farm vehicles within the next decade.

Overall, the revised EPA plan would eliminate 79% of hydrocarbons and 59% of nitrogen oxides that now form the Southland’s smog, compared with cuts of 88% and 71% respectively under last year’s more stringent proposals.

EPA officials say the measures remain strong enough for the Los Angeles Basin and Sacramento and Ventura counties to achieve health standards for ozone, the main ingredient of smog, and carbon monoxide. But the EPA decided to follow a suggestion from Riordan’s staff to remove some expensive proposals to cut nitrogen oxides by putting off a final plan to combat another serious pollution problem--particulates--for two more years as allowed under federal law. Nitrogen oxide can react in the atmosphere to form particulates.

“We didn’t need the level of Draconian measures that the original proposal called for,” said David Howekamp, chief of the EPA’s regional air program. “We were out there with unnecessarily high targets, so we were able to drop a lot of things.”

Ron Lamb, vice president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said he was “cautiously optimistic about what I’ve seen . . . but I’m also concerned about some of the economic consequences. It is still going to be increasingly costly.”

Also Tuesday, the EPA took the first step toward letting the state retain control by approving some state measures to replace federal ones, including mandates for lower polluting gasoline, motorcycles, recreational vehicles and consumer products.

Wilson spokesman Paul Kranhold praised the EPA for “embarking on a pretty ambitious course of developing national standards” for diesel vehicles, but added “there ought not to be a FIP, whether it’s the original draft or the one released today.” Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) is drafting legislation to nullify it.

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The Smog Plan

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday unveiled its more friendly federal clean-air strategy for California’s smoggiest areas. The plan eliminates many strict proposals included in a draft document proposed a year ago. The plan would not take effect for at least two years, and then only if state officials fail to win approval of their own plan. Here is a sampling of how various pollution sources are dealt with under the original proposal and Tuesday’s final plan:

Trucks

BEFORE

* New California-based heavy-duty diesel trucks would have been required to cut exhaust by about two-thirds by 1999.

* Non-California truckers could have made only one stop in the Los Angeles basin, Sacramento or Ventura, or would have had to use only the most modern trucks.

AFTER

* New California trucks must cut their exhaust by half by 2002.

* Limits on non-California trucks were removed, but the EPA vowed to pursue a national emission standard by 2004.

Aircraft

BEFORE

* Commercial airlines would have been forced to find ways to eliminate 35% to 45% of all emissions from their aircraft and ground operations.

* Owners of private aircraft would have been charged $2.30 per landing and takeoff to discourage flights.

AFTER

* Commercial airlines must gradually convert most of their ground equipment to electricity. Aircraft engines, however, are left unregulated.

* The fee on private aircraft was eliminated.

Ships and Boats

BEFORE

* Ships would have paid $10,000 annually per ton of emissions for docking in Los Angeles and Long Beach.

* Owners of pleasure boats that have older, dirtier engines would have been charged $90 per day or $400 per year.

AFTER

* All fees were eliminated.

* Shippers would agree to a speed limit of 15 mph within 10 miles of the ports

* Tugboats would use cleaner fuel than diesel.

* The EPA will also work with the shipping industry to move shipping lanes farther offshore.

Cars

BEFORE

* Gradually lower emission standards would require cars powered by natural gas, electricity and other alternative fuels to be sold in California.

* The EPA proposed requirements for better maintenance of cars so that they would continue to achieve low emissions.

AFTER

* The requirements for electric cars and other alternative fuels remain intact.

* Proposals to improve vehicle maintenance were eliminated.