9 AQMD Advisors Quit in Protest of New Smog Plan

In a stunning rebuke of the Southland’s smog agency, nine of its 11 scientific advisors resigned en masse Thursday in protest of broad policies and decisions they said are failing to protect the region from severe pollution that threatens public health.

The nine--chemists, economists, health experts and other scientists--said they are most concerned that the smog plan unveiled last week by the South Coast Air Quality Management District will not ensure healthful air. They said it is based on unreliable predictions about the severity of smog over the next 15 years.

But the advisors also named a long litany of fundamental concerns over virtually every major facet of the AQMD operations, from lax penalties imposed on industrial polluters to the board’s failure over the last two years to adopt any major new measures to combat pollution.

The experts, who are supposed to guide the agency and its governing board on all major technical decisions, said the new smog plan--designed to guide pollution control through 2010--was drafted without their input. The advisors said they learned about its conclusions last month in news reports.

“Based on our many collective years of experience in the air pollution field, we do not think the district’s posture is consistent with the efforts needed to achieve healthful air quality for the 13 million people in the Los Angeles Basin,” said a letter to AQMD board Chairman Jon Mikels signed by eight of the nine who resigned effective immediately Thursday. The ninth advisor resigned in a separate letter.

“Since we cannot agree with the current and proposed policies . . . it is best for us to resign,” the advisors said.

The advisory council members cited the AQMD’s “lack of coherent rule-making” over the last two years and “the absence of concerted rule-making in the proposed new plan.”

Jane Hall, a Cal State Fullerton economist who resigned after serving more than 10 years, called the agency’s new smog plan “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“There’s been a drift in the district in the last couple years away from effective air quality management,” Hall said in an interview.

In the plan, AQMD officials decided to eliminate or shelve several dozen proposed anti-smog measures, saying their new computer analyses showed that fewer tons of pollution would need to be eliminated than previously believed in order to meet federal health standards.

The agency also determined that no extra cleanup effort would be needed to meet the national limits on particulates--tiny pieces of soot, nitrates and other substances that can be deadly for those with lung and heart ailments.

Since the tiniest particles come from vehicle exhaust--largely diesel engines--controlling them is especially controversial and costly.

In their letter, the advisors said “the district is embarked on a course that will not lead to attainment of the federal ozone and fine particle standards.” They criticized the plan for being based on technical assumptions that are uncertain and unreliable. Last week, a top Clinton administration official criticized the plan for the same reason.

They also criticized the “unmet promise” of the AQMD’s pollution trading program, a highly touted plan to reduce emissions by allowing industry to buy and sell smog credits as long as overall pollution is reduced. A proposal to triple the size of the so-called RECLAIM program was scuttled last year.

Just as troubling, the advisors said, was the “absence of enforcement of rule violations over the past 18 months.”

The AQMD advisors are among the nation’s leading experts in air pollution. Like Hall, many had at least a decade of experience with the air quality agency.

Tom Eichhorn, the AQMD’s communications director, said the resignations came as a “complete surprise.”

“The concerns they are voicing are similar to what we’ve heard in the environmental community, which believes we should be doing a more aggressive job and that’s understandable,” Eichhorn said.

“Given the recession, and the public’s concern about jobs, we’re doing what we can do. But the public ought to be pleased with the progress that we’ve been making toward clean air.”

The blunt criticism by the advisors, coming with no warning, was an unprecedented blow to the air quality agency, which over the years has been known for its innovative and stringent anti-pollution programs.

Since 1994, however, the AQMD staff and governing board have come under intense political pressure from politicians and business leaders, who have said the anti-pollution effort was hurting the state’s economy.

Arthur Winer, a UCLA atmospheric scientist who resigned from the panel, said he is troubled that AQMD Executive Officer James Lents and his staff “are declaring victory against smog, saying that we don’t need to to do much more.”

“My concern is really looking into the future,” Winer said. “I think that the district and the [state Air Resources Board] deserve a tremendous amount of credit for the dramatic improvement in air quality we’ve seen over the past 10 or 15 years. But . . . that’s because of controls that we put in to place many, many years ago.

“The question is what will happen five years from now if we don’t stay the course?”

Despite decades of progress, the region--Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties--still has by far the nation’s foulest air. Federal health standards for ozone, a powerful lung irritant, are violated on the average of every three days. The levels of particulates also are the nation’s highest.

“Public health is the ultimate issue here,” Hall said.

“[Resigning] was a very hard decision for everyone who made it. Here’s an agency that has done some excellent work and they have fallen on some hard times politically.

“The essence is that it’s not going to change any time soon and there’s nothing this [advisory council] could do that was likely to change that,” Hall said.

Nick Hazelwood, who heads the advisory panel, was not among the nine who resigned Thursday. But he had notified the agency earlier this year that he was leaving this summer for a multitude of reasons.

In an interview Thursday, Hazelwood said he “agrees with the sentiments” in the letter but told AQMD board chairman Mikels that he will stay on for a few months to help with the transition when a new advisory council is appointed by the board.

“At our meetings, there was a significant feeling of ‘what’s the use,’ ” said Hazelwood, a retired environmental consultant from Orange County. “The advice, when asked for and given, was not heeded and in some cases not even acknowledged.”

Only William Carter, a UC Riverside air quality scientist, will remain an advisor. Carter reportedly told fellow council members that although he also opposes the AQMD’s course, he feels he may still have some influence on decisions.

Others who resigned include Russell Sherwin and John Peters, two USC scientists who are leading researchers on the health effects of pollution.

In addition to their other criticisms, the scientists cited the AQMD’s “dismantling” of its system for measuring air quality throughout the four counties, calling it “the world’s premier air pollution monitoring network.”

Many monitoring stations are being shut down for cost reasons. Orange County will have only two monitors, compared to the four it had.

But the advisors’ harshest criticism was reserved for the data used to draw up the AQMD’s latest clean air plan. The agency is required to revise its strategy every three years, but this version--which goes to the AQMD board for a final vote in October or November--is pivotal because it is the first to address the problem of particulates.

Although they agreed that the assumptions about future pollution levels were unreliable, they stopped short of suggesting that the data was manipulated to avoid aggressive and unpopular measures.

“The model they are relying on is extremely sensitive to changes in information,” Hall said. “There is a lack of confidence that their predictions are accurate.”

AQMD spokesman Eichhorn said the staff “disagrees strongly” with the criticism of the new plan, calling the computer analyses “the best in the district’s history.”

The resignations were disturbing, Eichhorn said, but “we get beat up all the time. It’s not unusual to have disagreements within the family.”