AQMD battles smog with a plethora of new regulations.

AQMD battles smog with a plethora of new regulations

When regional air quality officials expanded their war on smog to charbroiler restaurants and backyard barbecues in 1990, it only confirmed what Southland industry had known for some time: no stone would be left unturned in the effort to purify Los Angeles' polluted skies.

In 1990, the South Coast Air Quality Management District proved it had the will - if not the way - to bring Southern California into the fold of environmentally clean cities.

Even with the momentum of a new U.S. Clean Air Act, and the presence of Big Green on the California ballot, AQMD's role in Southern California became as complex as it was contested.

On the surface, the district had good reason to sound the clarion call for more ambitious anti-smog rules and stepped-up enforcement. Despite years of the toughest polluting rules in the United States, the Los Angeles area remained the smog capital of the United States, with levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and hydrocarbons exceeding national standards.

Still, victories were chalked up with the November announcement that 1990 was shaping up as the cleanest smog season on record.

At the beginning of 1990, AQMD officials were freely using terms like "watershed" and "landmark" to describe the first stage of its 20-year plan to bring the Southland up to federal clean air standards by 2007.

Furniture manufacturers, paint shops, dry cleaners and printers learned firsthand a lesson of Southern California survival in the `90s. With the larger sources of smog like cars, oil refiners and utilities already heavily regulated, the new burden would fall on them.

"Individual sources of pollution add up and the hallmark of our board is that everybody must do their share," said AQMD spokesman Tom Eichorn. "Overall it was a banner year for clean air."

Not everybody was waving the district flag, even among those who recognized the AQMD was under pressure from the federal government and Sacramento to take the brown gunk out of the skies.

"Everybody wants to get the most bang for the buck, but the AQMD rules seem to cost big bucks but get little bang," declared Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

Emboldened by the acceptance of environmental issues onto the mainstream political agenda, AQMD in February reported it would broaden its mandate to rules paring Southern California's role in global warming and ozone-layer damage. Foam manufacturers and automobile repair shops using a class of pollutants known as chlorofluorocarbons were put on notice to find an environmentally safe alternative.

They weren't alone. In April, local aerospace industries, already reeling from the outbreak of Glasnost-inspired peace, were put on AQMD alert. The air district unveiled new regulations to trim pollution from a host of industrial liquids and solvents used by defense contractors to clean circuit boards and paint airplane fuselages.

Fluids that spewed a smog component known as volatile compounds, or VOCs, would be pared by 2 tons a year, or 55 percent from its present level, by 1992. The cost of the rule, in terms of buying new equipment and finding less polluting liquids, was only $6 million according to AQMD, supposedly one of the reasons why aerospace giants like Hughes and Northrop limited their carping.

Perhaps the most significant AQMD decision of the year received the fewest headlines, even though some projected its cost to industry at $2 billion a year. In July, the air district approved a rule change forcing all new or expanding businesses to install advanced smog-control devices, shut down old sources of pollution or buy credits.

The rub for the industries most affected by the complex rule - from aerospace firms and oil refiners to apparel, paper and textile plants - was that the price of the credits was increasing faster than inflation in Argentina. Now the credits used to legally pollute would skyrocket from $4,200 to $46,000 apiece. Moreover, the cap on allowable daily emissions was ratcheted down from 331,000 pounds to 46,000 pounds. Average cost of the rule for each new or growing plant: between $22,000 and $81,000.

Even more obscure than that change was AQMD's quiet announcement last March that it would begin assessing the environmental impacts of all major development projects like the San Fernando Valley's Porter Ranch.

In July, AQMD staff finally proposed a ban on a controversial chemical used by four of the Southland's oil refiners. Officials at Mobil Oil Co. estimated the cost of replacing hydrogen fluoride, a catalyst used in the production of unleaded gasoline, at $100 million or more. Other plants operated by Golden West, and refrigerant maker Allied Signal, also echoed warnings of economic gloom.

November brought another in a long series of AQMD rules covering the use of paints, this one regulating aerosols. AQMD officials predicted the rule would mean an 80 percent reduction in volatile organic compounds by 1996, but paint manufacturers said the regulation was tantamount to a ban. Some critics echoed similar predictions about the district's rule on architectural coatings.

Also in November the district unveiled plans to halve the 1.89 million pounds of chlorofluorocarbons dumped into the air when automobile air conditioners are serviced. While the new Clean Air law calls for the mandatory recycling of CFCs by 1992, the district got the jump, telling some 10,000 gasoline stations, automobile repair shops and car dealerships that CFC-recovery equipment might soon be standard fare.

Beside the 30-plus rules passed or tightened in 1990, enforcement became the new watchword.

In July, AQMD confirmed it was accelerating a surprise inspection program on major industrial polluters. Powerine Oil Co.'s refinery in Santa Fe Springs was the first to be descended upon by a cadre of AQMD inspectors for two, full-day visits. The result was 12 citations, many of them for bookkeeping peccadillos, that could cost Powerine as much $300,000 in penalties.

New policing was also ordered on the 2,500 charbroiler restaurants in the Southland. AQMD told the restaurants, many of them fast-food outlets, to comply with a regulation forcing them to use filtration devices that cost between $15,000 and $45,000 each. Soon, people began asking if only 7 tons of pollutants a day was worth risking the livelihood of some mom-and-pop franchises.

The district - which again reiterated its Orwellian call for all Southern California drivers to forsake their smog-belching vehicles for electric cars in the early 21st century - also focused on the automobile last year, despite its limited power to regulate them. AQMD's Regulation 15, the first mandatory car-pooling regimen in the United States, was enforced with new vigor in 1990.

Since 1988, when the district rule requiring businesses with 100 or more employees to develop rideshare plans went into effect, AQMD had cited only 18 companies for fines worth $314,500. However, by the end of last April, 53 other firms were facing stiff penalties, mainly for tardiness in submitting plans. May Co. learned that AQMD was serious last May, when it had to pay the district $150,000.

In another sign of the smog czar's willingness to hammer non-compliant companies. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. agreed to settle - for $425,000 - 110 air pollution breaches caused by its "smoking trains." But Lockheed Corp., which earlier in the year announced it largely was moving out of its Burbank location, agreed to the biggest economic jolt. The company in February consented to settle dozens of record-keeping breaches for its solvent use for $1 million - the largest settlement in district history.

Of the 30,000 Southland business under AQMD scrutiny, none argued louder than Atlantic Richfield Co. last year. In August, Arco confirmed it was warring with the air district over $550,000 in emission fees, monies paid to the district to legally pollute. Air regulators said the fees were needed because Arco underestimated its total emissions dating back to the mid-1980s, but the oil giant cried foul.

"We tried to be more visible," Eichorn said. "It doesn't do much good to quietly cite somebody and make people think there is no program."

While many business leaders and pro-industry politicians signaled a new willingness to go along with AQMD rules, others gained more courage to take the smog bureaucracy to task. Why, they asked, was so little focus placed on the cost of environmental rules when the economy teetered on the bring of recession and smaller industries, like furniture manufacturers, were packing up and leaving the area for friendlier surroundings?

Even L.A. County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who sits on AQMD's powerful governing board, strongly backed a state Senate bill that would have given voters the chance to recall unpopular district rules. Fortunately for AQMD Executive Director Jim Lents and his El Monte-based crew, nothing ever came of that.

But the call for more district oversight was answered in late September, when Governor George Deukmejian signed legislation forcing AQMD to submit a first-ever annual report to Sacramento, detailing, among other things, the economic and employment cost impact of its regulations.

Only months before, AQMD had been showered by criticism when it approved a record $101.4 million budget for 1990-91, with 1,138 employees, double its mid-1980s level.

Many business groups said the district, while well intentioned, was leading Southern California and its withering manufacturing base into economic hell. Smog officials admit when their Air Quality Management Plan was launched last year, their relationship with some industries was rocky - at best. But, now, they say, they are on a better footing with more dialogue and a new eye on on market incentives.

For all 1990's tumult, the district showed clear signs it was willing to reconsider some of its Draconian measures and their "command-and-control" style of enforcement. Taking a page out of Unocal Corp.'s book, AQMD directors adopted a rule change allowing aerospace companies to legally exceed pollution standards on paints if they purchased and scrapped a prescribed number of pre-1979 cars.

Moreover, the October decision by the California Air Resources Board - mandating that 10 percent of all new cars sold in California by 2003 be 10 percent cleaner operating than 1993 models - prompted Lents to say that regulations pertaining to business might be eased. Lents noted that two-thirds of all smog comes from the 8 million to 9 million cars operating in the four-county South Coast basin.

"They began thinking in an innovative fashion, but there is still some distance to go," said Kyser of the L.A. Chamber. "The basic tendency of any bureaucracy is to churn out rules that are single purpose and well intentioned, but end up having multiple effects."

Outside of its on-again, off-again feud with some industries, AQMD was also quarreling with the Environmental Protection Agency. Worried that the Clean Air Act might be too lenient on areas already being regulated, AQMD last spring declared that federal authorities were hampering L.A.'s chances of meeting federal standards. But the EPA turned around later and said the district's 20-year regimen, the Air Quality Management Plan, was inadequate. The feds also scored points with local industry when it said too many AQMD rules hinge on unproven technology.

As one AQMD official put it: "Just as we have to recognize the concerns of industry, . . . the business community has to recognize the overwhelming public demand for a cleaner environment."

PHOTO : Emissions: New regulations could cost billions

PHOTO : Air: AQMD gets even tougher