Gov. Signs Bills for Air, Coast

Cleaning California’s air and protecting its coast was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s priority Thursday as he signed more than two dozen environmental bills into law.

His actions created a conservancy to protect the majestic Sierra Nevada mountain range, gave carpool lane preference to energy-efficient cars and cracked down on cruise ship pollution.

Environmentalists applauded most of Schwarzenegger’s actions, but said several pending measures will further test his green credentials. Bills awaiting his approval or rejection include those to control port-generated air pollution in Long Beach and Los Angeles and to require cellphone makers to recycle their products. Both are strongly opposed by business groups.

“We’re pleased that the governor has signed important bills for reducing diesel pollution and cleaning up older cars and preserving the Sierra Nevada, as well as important ocean protection bills,” said Bill Magavern, senior lobbyist for Sierra Club California. “The biggest tests are yet to come.”

Schwarzenegger apparently ignored the pleas of his friend Jay Leno, host of television’s “Tonight Show,” and signed a bill that will require smog checks for vehicles built since 1976.

Current law exempts 30-year-old and older cars from smog checks. A classic-car buff, Leno had called the Assembly office of author Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View) to complain. The governor included no message in his signing of the bill, AB 2683.

Another classic-car owner called the new law “poppycock.”

Old cars are either dilapidated and soon to stop running anyway or else well-maintained by car buffs like him, said Chuck Abbott, past president of the Southern California chapter of the Pontiac-Oakland Club International.

“There are other things politicians could do,” he said, “that would have a far greater impact on the air pollution than going after specialty cars that are maintained by people who cherish them.”

Schwarzenegger also signed a bill -- AB 2628 by Assemblywoman Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) -- that will allow solo drivers of vehicles that get 45 miles per gallon or greater fuel efficiency to use carpool lanes after the federal government approves such a use, as is expected.

Those vehicles include the Honda Civic Hybrid, Honda Insight and Toyota Prius. The law takes effect in January and is strongly opposed by Ford Motor Co. Eight members of the Assembly -- all Democratic women -- drive a Prius as their state-leased vehicle.

Schwarzenegger has hewed closely to the position of the California Chamber of Commerce and other business groups in acting on legislation, but on Thursday he ignored the chamber’s “oppose” position to sign a bill requiring healthcare service plans to cover equipment used by children with asthma.

In a signing message on AB 2185 by Assemblyman Dario Frommer (D-Los Feliz), Schwarzenegger wrote, “Increasing the availability and affordability of essential medical equipment for children with asthma is vitally important to the management of the disease.”

Better to prevent the disease, he wrote, than to have to manage it.

“Improving the quality of our air is a priority of my Administration,” Schwarzenegger wrote.

In what was expected to be his only public bill-signing ceremony as he wades through more than 800 measures sent to him by the Legislature last month, Schwarzenegger appeared on a platform straddling a Sierra foothill creek east of Sacramento to sign a bill creating a Sierra Nevada conservation zone.

Although it won’t have any regulatory power, the government agency -- covering 25 million acres from Modoc County in the north to the Owens Valley in the south -- will be able to funnel state bond money to local governments and nonprofit trusts to buy land and easements and protect them from development or timber harvesting.

The Sierra Nevada Conservancy grew out of frustration in rural California counties that environmental bond money was being spent in the Lake Tahoe area, San Diego, the Santa Monica Mountains and along the California coast -- all areas with their own conservancies.

The California Coastal Conservancy, for example, has done more than 950 projects -- constructing trails and restoring wetlands, public piers and waterfronts.

“Money keeps flying around for these resource funds, but we didn’t have a pocket to collect it,” said Elizabeth Martin of the Sierra Fund, a nonprofit environmental group. “These powerful constituencies -- Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego -- do have the pockets and they have been getting the money.”

Assemblyman John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), who wrote the legislation along with Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City), said the new conservancy “offers a unique marriage of economic development and environmental protection.” Laird said rural Sierra communities comprise 8% of California’s population but provide 48% of the state’s water.

Another bill signed by the governor will set limits on one of the most destructive forms of fishing, which involves dragging weighted nets across the ocean bottom to catch halibut, pink shrimp, prawns and sea cucumbers. The bill -- SB 1459 by Sen. Dede Alpert (D-Coronado) -- restricts how many boats can engage in such bottom trawling and, for the first time, gives the state Department of Fish and Game the power to regulate all of those fishermen.

It also will close some sensitive areas to protect sponges, corals, sea anemones and nurseries for young fish. It will shut down additional areas in coming years unless regulators can show the trawlers are not damaging the seafloor.

Mike McCorkle, president of the Southern California Trawlers Assn., objected to the bill and said the Legislature has been told “nothing but lies about [wasted] bycatch” by environmentalists and recreational fishing lobbyists who he said eventually want to shut down all bottom trawling.

Despite Schwarzenegger’s vow to streamline government -- and his admonition in one veto message Thursday that “this is not the year to add another unnecessary program to California statutes,” -- the governor signed a bill to create an Ocean Protection Council to coordinate California’s coastal conservation efforts. Estimated to cost $250,000 a year, the new five-member board includes two lawmakers.

The state Department of Finance opposed the bill -- SB 1319 by Sen. John Burton (D-San Francisco) -- saying it creates a permanent new organization in state government and violates the separation of powers between the Legislature and the administration.

Schwarzenegger also signed bills to crack down on pollution generated by the eight major cruise ship lines operating out of California. AB 471 by Assemblyman Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) bans onboard waste incineration within three miles of the coast, and AB 2093 by Assemblyman George Nakano (D-Torrance) bans the release of “gray water” from dishwashers, showers and sinks. Still awaiting action is a bill that would ban cruise ship sewage dumping.

In a move ridiculed by Democrats, Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill endorsed by the blue-ribbon commission the governor convened after the Southern California wildfires of 2003.

The bill -- AB 2406 by Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez (D-Norwalk) -- would have required fire departments to submit information to the state fire marshal about response times and staffing.

In his veto message, Schwarzenegger said the bill would impose “an unnecessary and costly mandate.”

Times staff writers Kenneth R. Weiss and Jordan Rau contributed to this report.