2nd Suit Filed Over Air From S.F.Bay Area Smog

For the second time in a month, the state Air Resources Board has been sued by a Central Valley air quality district over pollution blown in on winds from the San Francisco Bay Area.

The local air district for Sacramento County asks in its lawsuit that the state air board push for tougher auto smog inspections in the Bay Area.

That suit, filed Monday in Sacramento Superior Court, follows a virtually identical legal challenge launched Feb. 20 by the San Joaquin Valley air district asking that Bay Area motorists participate in the Smog Check II program.

“The major point of our lawsuit is fairness and equity,” said Kerry Shearer, a spokesman for the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.

Though cars in Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley have to pass the tougher standards of Smog Check II, motorists in the Bay Area do not. It is the only metropolitan area in the state that hasn’t been required to participate in the program.

The result, according to Central Valley air regulators, is a huge amount of bad air blown in on winds during the summer months, adding to the pollution problems of a region facing harsh consequences from federal regulators if it doesn’t clean up its air by 2005.

How much pollution is carried into the valley remains a question. A study in the early 1990s found that a quarter of the pollution came from the Bay Area, but state regulators say those conclusions represented a brief, bad smog cycle unrepresentative of normal events.

With more than 1 million cars in the Sacramento area, “there’s plenty of home-grown smog to put them over the health base standards,” said Gennet Paauwe, a California Air Resources Board spokeswoman.

In Sacramento County, the big problem is ozone, an invisible pollutant that can cause breathing difficulties and long-term health effects. The area has reduced the number of bad air days in recent years, but has a way to go to exceed federal standards.

At its peak in 1984, Sacramento had 23 days that exceeded federal air quality standards. Last year, just three days violated the limits, Shearer said.

The region has until 2005 to meet the federal standard of no more than one bad air day a year on average. If not, federal highway funding could be jeopardized and tougher limits on business could be enacted that could hinder economic growth.

Regulators in the San Joaquin Valley face a similar deadline and even tougher problems.

Aside from ozone, the southern half of the Central Valley has difficulties meeting air particulate standards because of diesel fumes, dust kicked up by agriculture and other pollutants.

Moreover, air regulators say the valley’s air is sullied not only by pollution from the Bay Area, but also by bad air blowing in from Sacramento to the north.

A review last year by the state air board determined that migrating pollution pouring into the northern San Joaquin Valley represented an “overwhelming” factor on bad air days in Stockton, Modesto and Merced.