Heavy Smog Stages a Return to Southland

After years of retreat, heavy smog returned to the Los Angeles region late Friday as ozone reached very unhealthy levels in the central San Bernardino Mountains, prompting a rare first-stage smog alert.

The brunt of the smog was concentrated along the Rim of the World highway near Lake Arrowhead, sparing the densely populated urban Los Angeles Basin from the worst air pollution but belying the mountain hamlet’s healthy alpine image. High mountain canyons can sometimes harbor ideal smog-forming conditions.

“For the most part, this is limited to a small portion of the L.A. Basin. People should exercise a good deal of caution in particular when exercising outdoors,” said Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“This is not a good time to go hiking or exercising in the Lake Arrowhead area, especially in the late afternoon,” Atwood said. “The elderly, children and people with asthma and heart and lung disease should stay indoors. Everyone else should avoid strenuous, sustained outdoor activity, such as yard work, biking, jogging. These are precautions everyone should take.”

Smog in milder -- but still unhealthy -- doses settled in the Santa Clarita, San Fernando, San Gabriel and San Bernardino valleys on Friday, capping two weeks of mostly poor air quality, according to the AQMD.

The summer of 2003 is shaping up as the most polluted year since 1998 -- the last time a first-stage alert was called. It comes on the heels of several years of minimal air quality improvements and signals serious vulnerabilities in the decades-long fight to clean the nation’s smoggiest region.

“This is a significant setback in our progress toward clean air and it underscores the need for further pollution control at the local, state and federal level, especially as it relates to cars and trucks,” said Barry Wallerstein, executive officer of the AQMD.

So far this year, 33 days of unhealthful air quality have occurred across the region, nearly twice as many as this time last year. Breezes blow most of the pollution inland, with communities from Simi Valley to Santa Clarita to Riverside tending to suffer the most.

Ozone is a colorless gas that forms in the air when emissions from tailpipes and smokestacks as well as paints and household chemicals mix with sunshine. It is highly corrosive and can destroy lung tissue, causing shortness of breath, headaches, nausea and dizziness. The federal government ranks air pollution in the Los Angeles region as extreme, the worst designation in the nation.

Lewis Murray, executive director of the Lake Arrowhead Communities Chamber of Commerce, said air quality was noticeably poor in the mountains and he worries what it might mean for visitors during the height of vacation season.

“It did seem kind of hazy today. It’s so hot up here today, so I’m not surprised,” Murray said Friday. “I don’t think of us having smog problems up here. I keep hearing how the smog is decreasing, and I just assumed that with the changes in automobiles we had turned the tide on smog.”

Indeed, the Los Angeles smog cleanup is widely regarded as one the nation’s great environmental success stories. Despite rapid growth and 10 million vehicles on area highways, days of unhealthy ozone have been cut by 70% over the past 15 years. The worst days, when ozone reaches the very unhealthy mark as it did in the mountains Friday, were thought to have been eliminated in 1998.

Montclair City Councilman Leonard Paulitz, who represents Inland Empire cities on the governing board of the South Coast AQMD, heard about the dirty air in Lake Arrowhead upon return from a meeting touting the success of the Los Angeles smog cleanup.

“The fight’s not over. If people thought it was over, this shows it’s not. Up until now, I thought things were getting better, but we’re losing ground,” Paulitz said.

Environmentalists seized on the smog alert announcement as further evidence that air pollution regulators in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Washington are spending too much time trying to mold environmental regulations to the liking of businesses and not enough time aggressively pursuing emissions reductions.

“We’re seeing this happening and all I can say is there are some sources of pollution that are growing and expanding and are not being controlled in any respect: the ships, the trains, the old off-road equipment,” said Julie Masters, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

On Aug. 1, Los Angeles air quality officials will consider a new anti-smog master plan that they acknowledge will be hard-pressed to achieve clean air goals by the federally mandated deadline of 2010. Failure to meet that target not only means people would continue to be exposed to unhealthy air, but that businesses and highway construction could face federal sanctions.

More dirty air may be on the way. The AQMD is forecasting first-stage smog alerts over the weekend for mountain areas between Crestline and Big Bear. Meanwhile, smog in the Santa Clarita Valley is hovering very close to the very unhealthy mark as well.