New Hope for Clean Urban Air

The South Coast Air Quality Management District is taking a welcome step in marking poor communities for intensive study, outreach and cleanup. Its board members may be feeling the heat from pending lawsuits, or perhaps they were simply persuaded by a new chairman to probe long-standing concerns of areas that bear the brunt of industrial pollution.

The AQMD board last week adopted a 10-point program that could improve air quality in Southern California’s most industrialized neighborhoods. Residents of Wilmington, San Pedro, Rialto, Huntington Park and other communities have long complained that their air is far worse than elsewhere in the region and that pollution from nearby factories and other industrial sources is responsible for outbreaks of respiratory and digestive illnesses.

Complaints pressed by environmental and community groups in recent months have charged that the agency pursued cleanup strategies that slighted low-income minority areas. The complaints, some of them lawsuits asserting federal civil rights violations, have clearly pressured the AQMD to respond. The agency’s new chairman, William A. Burke, announced his concern about the environmental complaints soon after assuming his post in August, even though as a board member he had voted for some of the regulations under attack.

The heart of the AQMD’s 10-point plan is a new monitoring system to analyze the severity and sources of air pollution in poor communities. The estimated $1-million expense will come from the agency’s existing reserve fund. Based on the results of the monitoring and on public comment at community forums that the agency will host beginning next month, the AQMD may reexamine its regulations on toxic air contaminants, the pollutants that can cause cancers and organ damage. The agency also plans to improve its response to environmental emergencies in poor communities under the 10-point plan and do more to keep such hazards from occurring.

The smog agency has been sharply criticized by business people in recent years as doing too much and by environmental groups as doing too little. Last week’s decision to undertake this environmental justice initiative marks an important step toward cleaner air by an agency that has long seemed stalled. That the board’s vote was unanimous may signal more than lip service for the initiative.