County Faces Tough Road in Meeting Pollution Rules

The county will have difficulty meeting tough new air-pollution rules and could lose federal funds if it cannot come up with a satisfactory compliance plan, air quality officials and industry representatives said Wednesday.

Reacting to new regulations announced in Washington, local officials said new technology and federal controls on vehicle emissions are their only hope for meeting the new air-quality standards.

“We are at the end of the rope in technological fixes. We need a major change in technology,” said Nader Mansour, manager of environmental regulation for Southern California Edison.

Aimed at increasing protection of public health, the Environmental Protection Agency’s new regulations establish lower levels at which exposure to ozone, commonly referred to as smog, is considered unhealthy. The new regulations will be phased in over about 15 years.

According to EPA statistics compiled between 1993 and 1995, Ventura County is the fifth-worst region in the nation for ozone pollution.

The new EPA rules for the first time also regulate microscopic soot, often produced by industrial power plants used by utilities like Southern California Edison.

But county officials said they have already taken a number of innovative steps to reduce industrial pollution and still may not be able to meet the new federal standards.

One area that they have little control over, officials say, is auto emissions, the single greatest contributor to smog. Ozone is produced when nitrogen and hydrocarbons from vehicle exhaust mix with sunlight.

They said they must rely on the state and federal governments to adopt more stringent exhaust regulations to meet the new air-quality standards.

“We’ve got to work with the state to get them to focus more in mobile source emissions,” said Dick Baldwin, head of the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District.

Baldwin, however, believes that the county’s efforts will be bolstered by new EPA regulations on locomotives, buses and off-road construction vehicles.

“They haven’t ever regulated those vehicles before, and [the new regulations] will help us because those vehicles come into the state through interstate commerce,” he said.

If officials do not devise a viable plan to meet the new air-quality standards, the county will lose federal road-building and sewer funds. How much money the county could lose is uncertain.

Baldwin said his agency will be working for the next three years to develop an implementation plan. The county must attain the new pollution limits by 2012.

Meanwhile, Marv King, Proctor & Gamble’s environmental manager in Oxnard, said regulators need to provide incentives for industry to devise new technology to further reduce pollution.

“We need rebates or reimbursement from something like a clean air fund,” King said.

* DELAY URGED

Foes of the stringent new air-quality standards launched a rear-guard action to undo the program. A16