Air Pollution, Soil Cleanup
Local corporations’ decision to withdraw support of the Air Quality Management District’s Regional Clean Air Incentives Market (RECLAIM) program is unfortunate and myopic (Jan. 13). RECLAIM is the air district’s attempt to make serious use of standard economic principles. Pollution is an external cost borne by the community, and producers will ignore it if allowed. Economists have maintained for over 50 years that the most efficient, fairest, administratively cheapest means of controlling pollution is to internalize such external costs and put them inside the decision to produce.
The AQMD has demonstrated sophistication and vision in its attempts to establish a major market-based program instead of saddling local producers with expensive command-and-control regulations. Now the major corporations the air district approached for collaboration and program development have pulled their support from the region’s best hope for effective, low-cost pollution control.
JAMES E. MOORE II
Associate Professor, Urban and Regional
Planning, and Civil Engineering
USC
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* Let’s set the record straight regarding your Jan. 12 editorial, “A Reckless Decision on Soil Cleanup.” No final decision has been made. The ultimate decision will be based, as all the State Water Resources Control Board’s decisions are, on our responsibility to protect California’s water quality, its environment and the health of its citizens.
When a team of eminent scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory submitted a report to the board finding that the environmental impacts from leaking underground storage tanks were not as severe as was once thought, we were obliged to notify responsible local regulators advising them on how to proceed pending a full evaluation and final decision by the board.
An underground tank advisory committee created by the Legislature is now reviewing the report and will submit its recommendations to us by Jan. 31. The board will consider these recommendations and then schedule a public meeting to hear comments from all parties with an interest in the state’s regulation of leaking underground storage tanks. Only then will the board consider policy changes to present tank cleanup procedures.
JOHN CAFFREY, Chairman
State Water Resources Control Board
Sacramento
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* Re “Cleanup Is More Dangerous Than Pollution,” Commentary, Jan. 11:
Perhaps while Henry I. Miller is busily dismissing the risks of exposure to toxics from Superfund sites as too costly and theoretical to bother with, he can also crusade against any long-term health studies of people living near these places.
No data means no money spent on research, and it also means no proof of liability. Any cancer victims (theoretical casualties, in Miller’s terminology) would have to fend for themselves, inventing other suitable explanations for their disease. Halting Superfund cleanups would also nicely insulate past polluters from financial responsibility for the messes they’ve made.
And heavy-equipment operators, the objects of Miller’s strongest concern, could dig foundations for skyscrapers. Of course, it might be desirable to dig only half the depth required by building codes to curtail time on the job and to curb the injuries that might come after 50% of the job is finished. After all, the danger of the building collapsing is part of a theoretical future and not worth considering.
NED BOYER
Pasadena