AQMD delays adoption of smog-trading plan.

Study contends business pollutes less than expected

The South Coast Air Quality Management District will delay adoption of its big smog-trading program in light of a new revelation that Southland companies are polluting far less than air officials assumed.

A recently released AQMD report found that in 1993, L.A. Basin companies were emitting a combined average of 28 tons a day of volatile organic compounds, chemicals emitted from paints, solvents and inks, said Sam Atwood, AQMD spokesman.

AQMD staff had reckoned that Southland businesses were emitting nearly twice as many tons of VOCs - more than 52 tons a day, he said.

The AQMD board was tentatively scheduled to adopt the VOC reduction plan in December, Atwood said. But now the board will delay that until March 1996, so AQMD officials can study the new data, he said.

The program may be changed in light of the new information, Atwood added.

The AQMD had proposed a program to reduce VOCs by about 5 percent a year between 1996 and 2010, Atwood said. It would have allowed Southland companies to emit 48 tons of VOCs a day in 1996, he said.

But that initial "allowance" is 42 percent higher than what industry was releasing in 1993, according to the new report. As a result, companies would not be forced to reduce polluting emissions under the rule, he said.

"If you were to assume that companies continued to emit VOCs at the 1993 level ... basically they won't have to reduce until the year 2005," Atwood said.

The rule as it is now drafted is "unacceptable," said Gail Ruderman Feuer, senior attorney from the L.A. office of the New York-based environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council. "You can't have a program which has no emissions reductions for 10 years."

The plan to reduce VOCs is the second and larger phase of the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market, more widely known as Reclaim. That program allows companies to either reduce pollution or buy pollution credits from companies that earn credits by reducing pollution.

Since January 1994, about 390 companies in L.A., Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties have been participating in the first phase of Reclaim, which allows companies to trade nitrogen oxide credits and sulfur oxide credits.

The VOC Reclaim program is expected to include 1,400 companies. If approved by the board, it is tentatively scheduled to go into effect in July 1996, he added. Atwood said the new report could mean a delay.

AQMD staff is going to "take a closer look" at the report, he said. "And if it turns out, as we suspect, that these starting allocations are significantly higher than the actual emissions, we will have to spend some time fine-tuning the program."

Meanwhile, business leaders may fight efforts to further cut the starting allocation, sources say.

Gerry Bonetto, director of government affairs for the Printing Industries of California, said that just before the report was released in late July, business leaders and environmental leaders were near consensus on accepting the VOC Reclaim plan. But now, both sides may oppose the second phase of Reclaim, he said.

"It could create opposition from the environmentalist sector. Now that they believe there is a 42 percent gap, it would be hard for environmentalists to be on board," he said. But if the AQMD were to "slice into the 42 percent, it would be hard for business" to support Reclaim.