Smog Plan Would Shift Emissions to Winter
In a novel move that would shift some summer air pollution to winter, air quality regulators are crafting a new strategy allowing industrial emissions in Southern California to increase in the off-season for smog.
Clean air rules are typically set to achieve clearer skies year-round. But the high cost of pollution control and strong resistance from the business community have forced the South Coast Air Quality Management District to seek more economical ways to regulate smog.
The smog problem would improve during the warmer months under the plan. But asthmatics and others with sensitive health may not like the seasonal approach, and it may disrupt some jobs in industries that shift their work schedules.
Support from business, which the concept is designed to help, is not guaranteed.
“I don’t personally know any industries that would see it as an advantage,” said Gary Stafford, vice president of Terra Furniture in Vernon and leader of an industry trade group.
In a report to be presented Friday to the AQMD board, the agency’s staff recommends letting manufacturing plants release more smog-causing compounds into the air in December, January and February, while reducing emissions during the rest of the year.
Total pollution released during the year by the affected industries would not change. But moving some summertime emissions into the winter, when winds and cooler temperatures keep the skies much clearer, would ease smog during the Southland’s peak season.
Ozone, the eye-stinging, lung-damaging gas that is the main ingredient of smog, is rarely if ever a problem during winter. But in warmer months, the Los Angeles Basin is blanketed by an oppressive layer of ozone formed when emissions react with each other and with sunlight and are trapped by still air. About 95% of the area’s health standard violations occur from April through September.
“The atmosphere can tolerate greater emissions in the winter without compromising air quality as a result of less sunlight to drive the photochemistry,” the AQMD staff report says.
The aim of the seasonal strategy is to ease the economic blow to manufacturers by letting them shift some production to winter months rather than curtail year-round activities or install costly equipment to comply with pollution limits.
The magnitude of pollution increases envisioned in winter under the concept has yet to be determined by the AQMD staff. But officials say that even if industrial emissions double or triple in wintertime, they would remain far below the level necessary to trigger a health violation or full-scale smog alert anywhere within the four-county basin.
Few residents, the AQMD contends, would notice the increase in winter smog.
“The potential adverse impacts . . . in winter months are small,” the report says. “Significant amounts of [emissions] can be shifted from summer to winter months without causing any” health standard violations.
That could be little solace for asthmatics and others with respiratory disease who have trouble breathing even when pollution falls within government health limits.
“Increasing emissions any time is a bad idea,” said Gladys Meade, an air quality consultant for the American Lung Assn. “They should proceed very carefully with this . . . There are a lot of factors they are not looking at, like the reactivity of the compounds. For another, the weather is not all that predictable.”
The strategy also could affect the labor force at hundreds of plants in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, from aerospace giants to furniture makers.
“There may be a greater need for temporary workers in the non-ozone winter season,” the AQMD report says. “Moreover, as facilities shift their production schedules to [winter], unemployment could rise during the smog season.”
Business leaders say shifting production schedules is impractical for most companies. Many manufacturers, such as printers, auto body shops, furniture makers and defense contractors, face year-round demand for their goods and services.
“We react to orders,” said Stafford. “We don’t necessarily receive our orders during the winter months, we receive them evenly throughout the year.
“I think they’re grasping everywhere for ideas,” he added. “But it’s all coming back to the same thing--squeezing more out of industry, when industry isn’t the problem, cars are. Industry has already come a long way. Emissions are down substantially.”
AQMD spokesman Bill Kelly said the staff is analyzing what kinds of companies could participate. “For example, some aerospace companies could schedule some of the painting of airplanes in the off-smog season,” he said. Other companies that could shift production are ones that operate in cycles, perhaps including printers of phone books and annual reports.
The AQMD, however, must also ensure that increasing the winter emission of petroleum-based compounds would not exacerbate another serious problem--particulates, the microscopic soot that lodges in lungs and forms a gray-brown haze. Particulates are sometimes severe in winter.
The seasonal plan, which will not come up for a vote until later this year, is part of a broader overhaul of smog rules that the AQMD board is considering. Called “inter-credit trading,” it would create a market for pollution credits much more far-reaching and open than the small program called RECLAIM that now exists.
For instance, a shopping mall that converts its shuttle buses to natural gas to cut emissions could sell credits to a factory. The credits could be banked from year to year--a controversial aspect because pollution could surge in any given year if businesses used them all at once.
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A Calendar of Smog
Because smog is bad in summer and infrequent in winter, air quality officials are considering a change in rules to shift pollution into cooler months. The chart below shows the average number of violations of the federal ozone limit per month from 1993 to 1995.
August: 27.6
Source: Air Quality Management District
