Summer Air Cleanest on Record in County

Ventura County enjoyed the bluest skies in decades this summer, thanks to cool, breezy weather that blew away smog, made the breathing easier for active outdoor people and ushered in the cleanest summer for air pollution on record, air quality officials announced Monday.

For the first time since the county began keeping records in 1973, just one day of significantly dirty air has been posted so far in 1999 in Simi Valley, the county’s smog hot spot, a far cry from years past when inland valleys would simmer in unhealthful ozone for dozens of days on end.

Ten years ago, for example, Simi Valley summers featured 40 such days when ozone exceeded federal health-based standards and about 10 days when the smog was considered unhealthful for everyone.

The improvement is even more dramatic because smog was almost certainly worse in the 1950s and 1960s, a time that predates local records, but when Southern California experienced rapid growth in population and uncontrolled emissions, according to air quality officials.

“It’s good news,” said Dick Baldwin, executive officer for the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District. “We’ve made progress in terms of cleaning up cars, cleaning up gasoline and cleaning up businesses. All that has helped, but this has been a cooler year than normal and that has helped us have the cleanest year on record.”

Even smog epicenters such as Ojai and Thousand Oaks, where violations of federal pollution limits occur every summer, escaped unscathed. Although those communities exceeded the more stringent state ozone standard on a handful of days this year, the number of such violations has declined 75% in the past five years, according to smog measurements collected by the air district.

Odds are slim that air pollution has one last gasp for 1999. With the arrival of fall and only three weeks until the smog season that began May 1 ends, it would take an unusual alignment of weather patterns to cause pollution to soar.

Heavy smog is rare this time of year as sunshine, which helps create ozone, diminishes with rapidly shortening days and accelerating Santa Ana winds.

Ozone, an invisible gas, is formed when carbon-based chemicals mix with other emissions and abundant sunshine.

It oxidizes plastic and stone, causes headaches and shortness of breath and can scar lung tissue, leading to long-term loss of respiratory function.

Kent Field, meteorologist for the county air district, said weather is primarily responsible for the improved air quality this year. He said low-pressure systems, which have been intact for much of the summer, have kept temperatures down, provided just enough clouds to reduce ozone formation and propelled winds over the region that includes Ventura County.

*

Those conditions, helped in part by La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year, are the bookend opposite of a normal summer pattern, when hot, stagnant air clamps down over inland valleys.

Meanwhile, fewer smog-forming fumes are being released to the air due to technological innovations largely spurred by regulatory mandates.

New cars sold in California emit 95% less polluting exhaust than models sold in 1970. California has the world’s strictest smog controls, with everything from bakeries to antiperspirants to diesel trucks targeted for emissions reductions.

“Clean air is one of our biggest selling features for Ventura County. This just makes it all that much more attractive,” said Kathy Janega-Dykes, executive director of the Ventura County Visitors and Convention Bureau.

Air quality improvements have spilled over the county’s borders as well. All across Southern California, summer smog packed more of a whimper than a roar this year.

Gradually, successive years of air quality gains are chipping away at the region’s stigma as the nation’s air pollution capital.

“All of Southern California is much better off this year,” said Joe Cassmassi, senior meteorologist for the Diamond Bar-based South Coast Air Quality Management District, the agency charged with smog cleanup in the greater Los Angeles region.

“Los Angeles is benefiting, Ventura is benefiting and so is San Diego.”

The gains against smog are particularly impressive because they occur during a period of rapid population growth and a resurgent California economy that is pumping more emissions into the air from ships at port, revved-up factories and consumer products, such as paint, perfume and hair spray used in millions of households.

Ventura County, for example, is home to 742,000 people, about 86,200 more than a decade ago, which is equivalent to adding a city nearly the size of Ventura during that period, according to officials.

But as more and more people move in--adding polluting cars, household chemicals and consumer products--continued progress against smog is going to be difficult, said John Buse of the Environmental Defense Center in Ventura.

“We have substantial new development in Ventura County and L.A. County that is going to produce new drivers, new mobile sources, and so it’s not time to relax,” Buse said.

Complicating the matter are new standards the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved in 1997.

*

The agency is planning after 2000 to switch to an eight-hour average measurement for ozone that more accurately reflects the amount of smog schoolchildren and outdoor workers breathe across the nation.

While clean-air programs have enough momentum to keep driving down smog for the foreseeable future, more violations may occur because the new standard is more difficult to meet.

For example, air in Simi Valley violated the eight-hour standard 21 times this year, Ojai violated it five times and Thousand Oaks three. Industry groups successfully challenged the new standard in a lower court, and the case is being reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Clean Air

Smog bottomed out to the lowest levels ever recorded in Ventura County this year. Credit pollution-control strategies and favorable weather. Here are the smog violations through Oct. 4:

*--*

U.S. Standards 1-Hr. 8-Hr.* Ventura 0 0 N. Oxnard 0 0 Piru 0 0 Thousand Oaks 0 3 Ojai 0 5 Simi Valley 1 21

*--*

* This is planned to be the new federal standard after 2000.

Source: Ventura County Air Pollution Control District