EPA Rejects Southland Smog Rules as Too Weak

Declaring that the region’s smog strategy will leave millions of Southern Californians breathing unhealthful air for too long, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday rejected the plan and began the process of ordering it to be overhauled.

On the eve of a new year, the long-awaited announcement dealt a major blow to regional air quality officials and businesses, and a victory to environmentalists. It culminates a battle between the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Clinton administration over the magnitude of efforts needed to clean up smog in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

The EPA’s move is aimed at forcing the AQMD--which already has the world’s most aggressive anti-smog rules--to find new ways to cut more emissions from businesses, vehicles, paints and other sources over the next two years.

“We have to call it as we see it. And the way we see it is the . . . plan just doesn’t cut it,” said EPA Regional Administrator Felicia Marcus. “Our message to them is: Try again, and we’ll help you get there. But we just can’t say yes to this plan.”

AQMD Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein defended his agency’s plan and said he would “challenge this ruling, if necessary.”

At the center of the dispute is a document, issued about two years ago, that substantially scaled back measures to combat smog. The plan outlined more than 60 anti-smog rules but abandoned or relaxed more than 30 others aimed at local businesses that had been included in a strategy adopted in 1994.

Those changes amounted to allowing 300 tons per day of additional pollution to remain in the region’s air, the EPA says. And although the 1994 plan would have put many rules into effect by 2000, the new plan would have taken many years longer to clean the air.

The measures the AQMD originally outlined and later dropped included mandating ride-share programs at shopping centers and sports arenas, placing pollution equipment on restaurant char--broilers and bakeries and more strongly regulating aerospace factories, printers and household products such as paint. Those measures are technically impossible, politically impractical or overly costly for businesses compared with the benefits they would produce, Wallerstein argues.

Once the EPA’s proposed disapproval of the plan becomes final--after 30 days of public comment--the AQMD would be legally responsible for implementing all measures in the stronger, 1994 plan.

If it chooses not to adopt those measures, it can then challenge the EPA in the federal Court of Appeals or implement other rules that would have an impact equivalent to those in the plan.

Wallerstein argues that the 1997 plan is legally and scientifically justified and aggressive in cleaning up smog. He said he will review the EPA’s reasons and will consider “remedying any valid defects,” but doubts any exist.

“I think an appeal would be likely, but we hope this matter would be resolved before such action is needed,” Wallerstein said. He said he still hopes to “convince [the] EPA that the plan is approvable the way it is or approvable with slight modifications.”

Environmentalists who have sued the AQMD to force stronger smog rules welcomed the EPA’s decision as confirming their stance.

“This is a holiday present for the people of Los Angeles,” said Gail Ruderman Feuer, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles. “We had some of the worst air this year in the last 10 years, and that’s because the AQMD won’t follow through with its commitments to clean up our air.”

There are some hints of a compromise. Talks with the AQMD “have identified some real high-potential” strategies that could substitute for the rules the AQMD believes are impractical, said David Howekamp, the EPA’s regional chief of air programs.

Howekamp said he cannot reveal the new ideas because they are part of settlement talks among the AQMD, EPA and environmentalists.

The adequacy of the 1997 smog plan has been one of the hottest issues to erupt in half a century of contentious, costly and ambitious efforts to ensure that air is safe to breathe in the Los Angeles region.

EPA officials say the main reason they cannot approve the plan is that it cleans up the air too slowly, leaving 14 million people in the four counties breathing unhealthful pollution for many years longer than the previous plan would. They say backsliding from previously approved smog plans is forbidden by the federal Clean Air Act.

In place of the 32 rules it deleted or relaxed, the AQMD plan relies heavily on vague, unspecified programs to meet anti-pollution goals after 2005. The EPA also said the agency lags behind in actually implementing other rules, adopting “less than 10 of 23 rules which the 1997 plan schedules for adoption by the end of 1998.”

‘Plan Was Kind of Going Backwards’

The current plan “was, in our view, a pretty big relaxation of the 1994 plan,” said Nancy Sutley, an EPA senior policy advisor. “They dropped a lot of near-term measures and didn’t have anything in their place. There clearly is still a significant public health problem in the South Coast Basin, and the 1997 plan was kind of going backwards.”

Ozone, smog’s main ingredient, can inflame the lungs and hamper their ability to function during exertion. Children and the elderly, in particular, can suffer asthma attacks, coughs, chest pain and eye irritation from ozone.

The Clean Air Act requires the Los Angeles Basin to comply by 2010 with national standards designed to protect people from respiratory harm.

Just about two years ago, the EPA approved the plan that the AQMD had drawn up in 1994. That marked the first time the region had a smog plan that complied with the Clean Air Act and won federal approval. But less than two months after that victory, the AQMD backpedaled. Under pressure from industries and conservative state legislators, the AQMD wanted to be more business-friendly, dropping rules considered impractical or ineffective.

Business leaders were generally pleased, but the substantial easing of the plan was a main reason behind a mass resignation of the AQMD’s scientific advisors, who said they were not consulted and doubted the new strategy’s scientific veracity.

AQMD officials contend that the weaker plan is warranted because their new computer modeling showed that the air can “carry” more tons of smog-forming gases than previously estimated without reaching an unhealthy concentration of ozone.

‘Some Hope’ of Compromise Voiced

Even the weaker 1997 plan would cost billions of dollars annually and more aggressively tackle smog than in any other place in the nation. The challenge is formidable--the AQMD has only a decade to cut pollution by more than half from all sources in the four counties, and it has struggled to find innovative solutions that won’t damage the economy or restrict growth.

The EPA repeatedly expressed its concerns before the AQMD board adopted the plan. But the federal agency only issued its rejection--six months past its deadline--after the AQMD sued to force a decision.

Marcus said her staff had tried--and is still trying--to negotiate with the AQMD and avoid the official rejection. But she said the AQMD backed her into a corner because it would not agree to any changes.

The EPA’s Howekamp said that the AQMD could drop proposed measures that are technically infeasible, but that it must add new ones that cut equivalent emissions just as quickly.

Wallerstein said he has “some hope” of compromise but cautioned that “it has to be on terms acceptable to the AQMD governing board.”

The next step in the process may be a hearing in April before U.S. District Judge Harry L. Hupp, who in October ruled that the AQMD must begin enforcing rules from its 1994 plan because the EPA never approved the 1997 plan.

EPA officials “are reasonably optimistic that there’s a middle ground here,” Sutley said.