Smog Panel to Overhaul Car Buyback Program

Facing evidence that its pioneering program for scrapping old cars is failing to eliminate pollution as claimed, the Southland’s smog-fighting agency is gearing up for an overhaul.

Under a program that has been highly touted as helping to clean up smog, the South Coast Air Quality Management District lets businesses pay to junk pre-1982 cars--the dirtiest ones on the road. In exchange, the businesses are granted pollution credits that allow them to avoid reducing emissions at their own companies.

So far, nearly 22,000 cars have been scrapped, with the AQMD saying that the 4-year-old program has eliminated millions of pounds of pollution.

The program is pivotal to smog control in the Los Angeles Basin. AQMD officials have touted it and other market-based programs as innovative ways to clean up smog by giving businesses a choice in how they reduce pollution.

In fact, the program is scheduled to be greatly expanded. Under the state’s smog plan, 75,000 cars are supposed to be scrapped per year in the Los Angeles Basin in order to eliminate enough emissions to achieve healthful air.

But AQMD officials are concerned that the program may not be living up to its promise. Vehicles being purchased and destroyed at times are in such severe disrepair that they are barely roadworthy--which means that spending public money to scrap those cars cleans up little, if any, pollution, the AQMD inspector for the program has charged.

On Friday, AQMD staffers who evaluated the program recommended that the agency’s board put a series of safeguards in place. Suggestions include having independent mechanics or AQMD inspectors examine every car to ensure that it is fully operational before it is scrapped.

As now structured, the program “does not exclude vehicles with severe mechanical problems or severe physical damage,” the staff members said in their report.

The AQMD’s top executive, Barry Wallerstein, said Friday that he will review the recommendations, hold a public forum, and then draft a proposal to take to the AQMD board in July.

“It is clear that there are a number of things we should do to further enhance the program,” Wallerstein said. “The bottom line is we want a credible program that the public has confidence in, provides flexibility and allows us to attain clean air.”

The goal of the program is to promote the early retirement of highly polluting cars by letting businesses pay into a fund that is used to buy old vehicles from motorists for about $600 apiece.

In exchange for scrapping old cars, the companies are granted credits exempting them from AQMD rules that require creation of employee ride-share programs or installation of pollution controls at their manufacturing plants.

The agency’s effort to fix the program comes after criticisms made last fall by AQMD inspector Bruce Lohmann, who charged that many cars being scrapped are in such poor shape that they conk out after being driven just a few yards.

“I’ve driven a lot of clunkers, but these are the worst cars I’ve ever driven in my life,” said Lohmann, who monitors the program for the AQMD.

Lohmann’s charges were made in a deposition in a lawsuit against the AQMD filed by Communities for a Better Environment. The group is seeking to halt the program.

In addition to the concerns over the scrapped cars, the AQMD board plans to evaluate this summer whether the program creates an “environmental justice” problem. Communities for a Better Environment charges in its lawsuit that the program violates civil rights because it allows oil companies to scrap cars rather than clean up emissions from refineries that are in neighborhoods mostly inhabited by African Americans and Latinos.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has oversight over air pollution rules, is investigating whether it should force the AQMD to abandon the program. Environmentalists have urged the AQMD to suspend it, saying that proposed adjustments are inadequate.

“For us that’s a Band-Aid, and it doesn’t really fix the program, since the problems go to the heart of the program,” said Gail Ruderman Feuer, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

AQMD officials have defended the program, estimating that it has eliminated 46 million pounds of pollution in the past four years.

Lohmann said many of the cars scrapped were unsafe to drive, with faulty brakes and steering. One 1970s pickup “wouldn’t budge,” he said. A 1980 BMW had a defective rear axle and brakes and made loud clanking noises when driven. A 1970s Capri went halfway around a 100-foot circle and stopped.

Under the AQMD’s rule, the companies that scrap the cars must certify that the cars are drivable. But the staff, in its report, noted that letting the scrappers evaluate the cars themselves “creates the potential for conflict of interest.”