Air Panel Fines Power Plant $17 Million Over Pollution

Regional air pollution officials have fined an electric power company a record-setting $17 million for allowing its Long Beach plant to illegally emit more than 1 million pounds of smog-forming emissions this year.

Under a deal reached with the plant’s owner, AES Pacific, regulators will lift an order that since November has kept the company’s three Southern California plants operating at only half-capacity.

But the company will be required to quickly install state-of-the-art pollution control equipment at a cost of about $37 million. Also, until the new equipment is installed, the company must use its lowest-polluting units first and the dirtiest ones--which emit as much as 12 times more pollution--last.

The agreement was designed to help alleviate the state’s power crunch while still “guaranteeing protection for the environment,” said Barry Wallerstein, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Wallerstein called the deal a landmark settlement that resolves “one of the most egregious air pollution violations in this agency’s history.”

In addition to being the largest fine in AQMD history, the penalty may also be the largest in the nation for an industrial source of air pollution, Wallerstein said. The AQMD regulates air pollution from about 30,000 businesses in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Aaron Thomas, a manager at AES, called the agreement a reasoned solution that “fairly balances the competing needs of protecting the environment and maintaining adequate supplies in California.”

The volume of excess emissions from the Long Beach plant is considered extraordinary--the equivalent of adding a large new power plant to the region. Power plants are among the region’s largest sources of industrial air pollution.

During the peak summer smog season, the company exceeded its pollution limits at its Alamitos plant in Long Beach by 685,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides. The excess in the fourth quarter is expected to reach about 500,000 pounds. The violations brought the plant’s emissions for the year to about 50% more than was allocated under its air pollution permits.

Nitrogen oxides, a product of combustion, combine with hydrocarbons to create ozone, a lung-irritating pollutant that is the main ingredient of smog. They also form airborne particles that are linked to an increase in heart attacks and deaths from respiratory diseases.

In August, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power paid a $14-million penalty for similar violations at its power plants.

Under an AQMD smog-control program for major polluters, known as RECLAIM, companies including AES are allowed a certain amount of emissions. If a company exceeds its allocation it must purchase smog credits sold by other companies. AES exceeded its limit but did not purchase credits.

Thomas said the company’s emissions increased more than expected as power consumption swelled last summer. At the same time, demand for the smog credits accelerated, raising the cost of the credits and making them more difficult to buy, he said.

Utilities in the region have known for seven years that major construction was needed at their plants to add catalytic devices that control nitrogen oxides. AES, which purchased the plants in Long Beach, Redondo Beach and Huntington Beach from Southern California Edison in 1997, hopes to complete work on all the smog improvements by June, Thomas said.