Air-Quality Zone Plan Draws Protest

Environmental groups Wednesday challenged proposed changes in local air-quality rules that they say would prompt growth by making it easier for new smog-producing industries to settle in Ventura County.

That, in turn, would make it harder for this county--one of the nation’s most polluted--to meet strict new federal air-quality standards by 2005, according to Citizens to Preserve the Ojai and the Environmental Defense Center of Santa Barbara.

The groups lodged protests before the county Environmental Report Review Committee against the proposed replacement of 30 air-quality zones with a single countywide zone for the purpose of trading air-pollution credits.

Under current rules, pollution credits that companies need to move here, or to expand operations, can be bought only from companies in the same zone that pollute less than the level allowed.

Those existing companies can sell their unused pollution credits “banked” with the county Air Pollution Control Board to nearby companies. The going rate is $15,000 to $20,000 per ton of air pollution.

The new rules would allow those banked credits to be sold for use anywhere in the county.

“If you remove these trading zones, you have the creation of emissions that never would have been created before,” said Russ Baggerly, president of Citizens to Preserve the Ojai. “There will be . . . industrial development. And industrial development always carries with it extra baggage.”

That baggage is more traffic, smog and loss of farmland, he said.

But air pollution officials who drafted the proposed rule changes said they would have no significant effect on the county’s fight against air pollution. Drafted many years ago, the old rules are burdensome, have little effect and cannot be justified under current law, officials said. “When you have bad policy, you try to get rid of it,” said Karl Krause, engineering director at the air pollution district.

Numerous local businesses have endorsed the rule changes.

Public testimony is set to continue at a Dec. 3 hearing at the County Government Center. The advisory committee’s recommendation will then be forwarded to the Air Pollution Control Board for a decision.