Battle Likely Over Sweeping Anti-Smog Plan

The Southland’s smog-fighting agency has drafted its most ambitious measure of the decade and is now bracing for a faceoff with businesses that may shape the future of many of the region’s manufacturers into the next century.

The proposal--expansion of a groundbreaking pollution trading market--represents the last great push toward cleaning up the Los Angeles Basin’s industrial sources of smog, a world-renowned effort that debuted at the end of World War II.

Large factories and small businesses alike, including in Orange County, would be weaned off thousands of solvents, paints and other chemicals containing VOCs--volatile organic compounds--the highly evaporative hydrocarbons that along with nitrogen oxides mix in the sky to create smog.

Hydrocarbons are released into the air from the ubiquitous petroleum-based solvents used to clean products from computer chips to aircraft fuselages, the inks that print newspapers, phone books and movie posters, and the paints and primers that give furniture its luster and metal its resistance to rust.

For 25 years California has had great success in slashing VOC emissions by reducing oil refinery emissions, installing special nozzles on gasoline pumps and exhaust controls on cars, and restricting the sale of oil-based paint. The latest proposal, unveiled last month, is the final major step in the AQMD’s strategy for controlling industry’s role in creating smog here.

Limits for VOC pollution would be set for more than 1,400 businesses in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Included are firms such as Northrop, Douglas Aircraft, Avery Dennison, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as auto body shops, printers, metal plating factories and other small companies.

Major companies in Orange County that would be affected include Disneyland, Steelcase Inc. of Tustin, Hughes Aircraft of Fullerton, McDonnell Douglas of Huntington Beach, Rockwell of Newport Beach and Anaheim and Diceon Electronics of Irvine.

Also affected would be eight 1-Day Paint & Body Centers in Orange County, as well as Westline Manufacturing Co. of Orange and Specialized Woodworking in Anaheim.

“The Walt Disney Co. is on record as supporting VOC RECLAIM,” said Disneyland spokesman John McClintock, adding that the company is part of an organized group of businesses that favor the proposed limits.

According to Pat Leyden, the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s deputy executive officer, the proposed rule--suggested by the AQMD staff and scheduled to be voted on by the agency’s board later this year--is of historic proportions.

“In and of itself, this is the single largest VOC rule before the South Coast board in the entire decade,” she said.

In one fell swoop--rather than the agency’s usual industry-by-industry regulations--the mandate would force companies to cut VOC fumes an average of 70% between 1996 and 2010, cleansing the skies of 33 to 40 tons of pollutants per day, more than any AQMD rule in 20 years.

Businesses that are targeted for reductions consume as little as 3 1/2 gallons of petroleum-based compounds per day--less than the amount it would take to paint the interior of a small house. Some businesses would have to cut more than 70%, some less, based on anti-pollution efforts already accomplished.

In a new twist, the largest companies would borrow bar code technology from supermarkets to electronically track their huge quantities of solvents and transmit the data to the air district.

As an expansion of the smog market called RECLAIM launched last year, the measure sets annual caps on emissions and lets companies buy, sell and trade pollution credits. The approach was designed to be cheaper and give industries more flexibility and financial incentives than the 32 smog rules it would replace.

Nevertheless, the measure will be one of the most contentious to come before the AQMD board since the region’s recession gave businesses more clout in molding smog rules. Industry and environmental groups are watching to see how aggressive the board, which recently added more conservative and pro-business members, will be in setting limits.

Some Southland manufacturers fear that they will be forced to take a path for the next 15 years that is fraught with uncertainty. While some low-polluting solvents have emerged, many industries argue that they have no technologies--even on the drawing board--that can satisfy what the AQMD proposes between 2003 and 2010.

Today’s array of widely used industrial chemicals would have to be reinvented virtually petroleum-free. At the same time, businesses insist that any new formulas not detract from the quality of goods, especially sensitive hardware such as military aircraft, or make prices uncompetitive with products manufactured where there are few smog rules.

“We will have to find completely new ways to apply coatings. This is going to be one of the most formidable problems we face,” said Los Angeles attorney Robert Wyman, who represents a coalition of aerospace and oil companies on air quality issues. “It’s not just a matter of spending money, it’s a matter of can they do it at all.”

Many of the industries have struggled to find environmentally safe substitutes.

Anderson Lithograph in Los Angeles has experimented with 95 solvents to replace petroleum ones used to clean its printing presses, said Frank Barnett, the company’s director of environmental services.

All the formulas--whether pine, citrus or vegetable-based--failed to wash enough ink and other debris from the presses’ rollers and blankets, left residue or corroded the machinery, he said. One damaged a press so severely that it cost Anderson Lithograph $35,000 to replace all its rollers, Barnett said.

One widely used solvent heralded as smog-free has already been banned because it poses another environmental threat--depletion of the Earth’s protective ozone layer.

Many business leaders say the AQMD is pushing the limits of technology further than ever before, causing some manufacturers to fear that they will have to leave the basin because the chemicals are critical to their operations.

“What we’re worried about is whether that will chill the business environment in Southern California,” said Wyman, who is an architect of the market-based approach but believes the proposal has gone too far.

Southern California environmental groups have misgivings about the market approach to cleaning up the pollutants. Some call it a license to pollute, especially in the Southland’s heavily industrialized communities, because the trading allows companies to buy credits and increase their emissions.

Just under 400 businesses are regulated under RECLAIM for two other major air pollutants, nitrogen oxides and sulfur.

Under the expansion, 964 companies emitting more than four tons of VOCs a year would be added in stages beginning next July. Then 470 more with annual emissions of two to four tons would be added beginning two years later.

Although the AQMD crafted the smog market at the behest of industries, many say its required emission limits are so severe that they prefer the old, oft-criticized “command and control” approach of individual rules.

Companies large and small have united in a push to cut the smog reductions in half--ending in 2003 instead of 2010--with a re-evaluation in 2000 to see if better technology has emerged.

AQMD officials call that option unacceptable, stressing that the Southland must slash over 1,000 daily tons of VOCs--a whopping 80%--within 15 years to comply with a federal health standard for ozone, the area’s most pervasive air pollutant. Ozone forms when VOCs and nitrogen oxides react in sunlight.

The industry groups--suspecting that the AQMD’s governing board will be more sympathetic than its staff--have requested an unusual September session to voice their complaints before the board. The board’s vote is expected in December.

For two decades, California officials have set mandates years into the future to force invention of anti-smog technologies, from catalytic converters in the 1970s to prototypes for mass-produced electric cars in the 1990s.

“If you look back at the history of technology-forcing rules, you see phenomenal stories repeat themselves over and over again,” Leyden said. “Whether it’s for a car or an engine or power plants or reformulated paints or inks, you hear a lot of [industries] saying we can’t make it. But you set the deadline five or seven years off, and a good 90 percent of the time we make it.

“Each time, the [smog] reduction came in cheaper than what they said it would cost. Each time more was accomplished than what they thought would be accomplished.”

Leyden said she is “very confident” that the proposed limits are achievable, especially because many concessions are built in. Companies are allowed to lag behind a couple of years in cutting emissions because starting allocations are based on pre-recessionary years, when they polluted more. Also, if the cost exceeds a certain amount per pound of pollution, about $18,000, the whole rule is automatically re-evaluated.

Some major firms are confident they can comply, including GTE Directories in Los Angeles, which prints the company’s California phone books. The plant has dramatically cut emissions by using more expensive soybean inks, but under the RECLAIM proposal, it would also have to find cleaner solvents by 2003.

At the Los Angeles Times, a leading source of VOCs, the newspaper’s Costa Mesa and Chatsworth printing plants can probably comply well in advance of the deadlines, said safety and environmental manager Al Perez. He said the newer Los Angeles printing plant will also meet its limit as long as the AQMD gives the plant credit it has requested for improvements already made.

The Times has shaved about 125 tons of air pollution annually by switching to soybean inks and mineral oil solvents. The soy inks, which contain one-tenth as much petroleum as the old formulas, cost the Times an extra $3 million per year, but they are preferred by readers because they don’t rub off as easily, Perez said.