AIR OF VICTORY FOR L.A. HOUSTON SMOG CLEARLY WORST.

Byline: Erik Nelson Staff Writer

As smog season moves into its final month, Los Angeles has its eyes on the prize: a silver medal in the Smog Olympics.

And for the second year in a row, Houston appears poised to capture gold in the air pollution contest that no city wants to win.

Southern California air quality officials said Wednesday that they are more than happy to concede the title after decades of being No. 1 in the number of unhealthy days, as indicated by the amount of ozone spread over the Los Angeles Basin, San Fernando Valley and Inland Empire.

The competition heated up over the weekend, with Los Angeles on Sunday violating the federal limit for ozone, a primary air pollutant, at monitoring stations in Lake Elsinore and Redlands. That brought the region even with last year's total, 39 days.

Since Sept. 20 - the previous bad air day for L.A. - both cities had been tied at 38 days, so the weekend's bad news might have put the area on top.

But just as Dodgers fans might look for losses at Pacific Bell Park to perk up their pennant hopes, an air quality agency spokesman noted that over the weekend, the Houston-Galveston metropolitan area struck out three times, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Houston was out in front, 42-39.

But the South Coast Air Quality Management District's executive officer, Barry Wallerstein, did not gloat, however, over the news.

``The way we look at the air quality situation, it's frankly similar to what many of the Olympic athletes have been saying,'' Wallerstein said. ``The fiercest competition is the competition with themselves. The rest of it just falls into place.''

Sunday's bad air locally came in large part because of sunnier, warmer weather, which helps convert air emissions from combustion into ozone.

Winning or losing doesn't matter, he added, ``as long as we are making rapid progress toward healthful air, we're serving the needs of the community and, hopefully, we're providing some leadership that others can benefit from.''

That leadership is not being looked kindly upon in all quarters in the Lone Star State, where the home team is still building its program.

Officials of the Texas Natural Resources Control Commission are promoting an ambitious package of air-quality standards for major sources such as refineries and factories as well as small, but ubiquitous, sources such as string trimmers and lawn mowers over the next several years.

``At the hearings, some folks took exception to some things,'' said Gene McMullen of the city of Houston Bureau of Air Quality Control.

Some at the hearings complained that Texas was trying to outregulate even California, McMullen said.

The new rules would also require that all new air conditioners work as ozone converters, in a sense filtering the air as they cool the city. Other proposals are setting a 55 mph speed limit on highways and keeping gasoline-powered lawn mowers silent between 6 a.m. and noon.

While Houston and Los Angeles are the undisputed leaders of the unhealthy ozone day count, with Atlanta, Fresno and New York far behind, Los Angeles came close to moving below the No. 2 spot by another measure of smog, Wallerstein said.

The worst ozone reading of the year in Southern California was 180 parts per billion, well below Houston's reading of 225 parts per billion, which resulted in a first-stage smog alert. Los Angeles hasn't had one of those in two years.

Close on L.A.'s heels were Atlanta and the Fresno area, which both recorded ozone highs of 170 parts per billion this year.

With Southern California's trend of reducing smog steadily each year, it's possible that other cities could overtake the area in the near future, said AQMD spokesman Sam Atwood.

``I think we'll move ahead (in air quality) before the Dodgers win the pennant,'' Atwood said.