AQMD to Drop Several Anti-Smog Regulations

In a major shift in anti-smog tactics expected to ease the burden on businesses and motorists, the Southland’s air agency plans to discard several unpopular measures and impose no extra steps to combat particulates, the deadliest form of air pollution.

The staff of the South Coast Air Quality Management District has concluded, after two years of data-crunching, that measures to reduce ozone, the main ingredient of smog, will also remove sufficient amounts of particulates without controversial new regulations that had been anticipated for years.

This means that costly measures for controlling particulates from vehicles and industries, such as use of alternative fuels for heavy-duty trucks and stringent controls on dairy farms and road dust, will be unnecessary, the AQMD says. Also, 26 proposed rules for reducing ozone pollution--which would cut travel to shopping malls, arenas, schools and other major destinations--will be abandoned or eased.

Details of the new strategy, obtained Wednesday by The Times, will be shown today for the first time to an advisory panel of industry, environmentalists and community leaders.

The approach signals a fundamental change for the regional agency, which is required by the federal Clean Air Act to craft a new plan that will shape air pollution efforts in Southern California through 2010. A draft of the new plan will be unveiled next month, to be followed by several months of debate.

The main message, AQMD Executive Officer James Lents said Wednesday, is that healthful air is achievable, and although it remains a costly challenge, the effort is not as onerous as feared just two years ago.

“It’s not getting harder to get there as we get better science and we get rules adopted,” Lents said. “In fact, it’s progressing. When we started in the late 1980s, people said it was impossible to meet the standards by 2010. We were questioned heavily about whether it was just a pipe dream.”

Although the Southland has had some form of smog controls in effect since the 1950s, this is the first time the AQMD has been required to develop a blueprint for reducing particulates. The tiny pieces of soot, nitrates, sulfur, dust, ammonia and carbon have been linked to an estimated 6,000 premature deaths in the region annually and cast a gray pall over the sky.

The basin of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties has by far the nation’s unhealthiest levels of ozone and the worst particulate pollution.

The AQMD’s new computer analysis--done with the assistance of two Caltech scientists--concluded that emission reductions from cracking down on ozone will be large enough to bring particulates down to the limit deemed healthy by the federal government.

That conclusion is expected to be a major relief for industry and community leaders, including Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. In 1994, Riordan persuaded the AQMD to put off measures combating particulates caused by diesel vehicles until more analysis could be done. Riordan argued that the steps would have a severe economic impact on the city’s harbor, airport and truckers.

At the time, the AQMD resisted the delay as unnecessary, but agreed to conduct a $1.4-million reanalysis.

“It now looks like based on this analysis, they were right--that we didn’t have to do as much [to control particulates] as we thought then,” Lents said.

Riordan’s staff had not reviewed the findings and would not comment Wednesday.

Environmentalists are expected to question whether efforts to control ozone are in fact sufficient to address the health threat posed by particulates, and whether the AQMD--which has not adopted any major smog-reducing rules in almost three years--is playing a mathematical shell game with pollution numbers.

“We have a lot of initial concerns and we are going to take a very close look at this,” said Linda Waade of the Coalition for Clean Air.

“This is modeling, and three different consultants can come up with three different modeling results. Just because that’s what the numbers say today, that doesn’t mean that’s what the situation really is. We still have the dirtiest air in the country.”

Gail Ruderman Feuer of the Natural Resources Defense Council said the agency was “playing this as rosy news, but it is an excuse to slow down.”

The vehicle trip-reduction measures, called indirect source rules, that were dropped from the new plan have been roundly criticized by community leaders and state legislators as clumsy, costly and impractical. Also among the 26 measures that were shelved or eased are more obscure rules proposed for some auto and boat paint shops and paper, fabric and film-coating operations.

Despite the revised plan, ensuring healthful air in the region will still be a difficult, multibillion-dollar endeavor for local industries and consumers.

The AQMD’s new plan is expected to identify as priorities the need to regulate businesses such as electronics firms, auto mechanics, machine shops and printers that use petroleum-based cleaning solvents and paints, as well as restaurants with broilers, metal parts industries and plastic, rubber and glass operations.

The agency also plans to emphasize measures for solvents, paints and other products used by homeowners and consumers--a source of smog that often eclipses emissions from industries.

“With the intensity with which we’ve taken on automobiles and traditional regulated sources, we’ve really been able to bring those emissions down quite a bit,” Lents said. “So it’s starting to make [residential and small commercial] sources stick out like a sore thumb.”

The AQMD concluded that some proposed rules can be dropped because the new computer model shows emissions don’t have to be reduced as much as thought to achieve the health standards. Volatile organic compounds need to be reduced 52%, not 70%, and nitrogen oxides should be cut 26%, not 48%.

The new model incorporates recent studies showing that the role of dust and cow manure in forming particulates has been overestimated. As a result, the reductions in exhaust already expected from other sources--especially diesel vehicles--will have a bigger impact on reducing particulates than previously thought.

Lents warned that more rules may have to be added later, since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by early next year is expected to announce new, more stringent health standards for ozone and particulates.

The AQMD board is expected to vote on the plan in October. It then will be reviewed by the California Air Resources Board, which must submit a statewide plan to the EPA in January.