Ports, airport wary of new air quality rules due from EPA; they fear improvement tab could drive away business.

They fear improvement tab could drive away business

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a sweeping air quality plan for Southern California this week which local officials contend could drive trade away from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, as well as limit air travel into the area.

In its Federal Implementation Plan, the agency will propose regulations aimed at reducing emissions from airplanes, ships and trains -- air pollution sources which have been subject to little or no regulation, said Dave Howecamp, director of the air and toxics division for the EPA in San Francisco. It will be released Feb. 15, he said.

Under the plan, airlines and train and truck operators would be required to reduce emissions and ships would have to reduce emissions or pay fees, Howecamp said. Port officials and an airline group official said the fees and costs of new equipment to comply with the regulations could drive trade and passenger flights away from the Southland.

"We're concerned about the economic impact" on the seaports and commercial airports in Los Angeles and Orange counties, Howecamp said. "We don't want to cause dislocation to either of those industries."

He acknowledged "there could be" an adverse economic impact from the regulations on the seaports and airports, "and we're trying to minimize the impact." Howecamp noted there would be a year of public hearings before the plan would be finalized and it may not be until "the late 1990s" when it becomes effective. The EPA developed the plan for the Los Angeles air basin, which includes L.A., Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, after losing a lawsuit brought by the L.A.-based environmental group Coalition for Clean Air. The group charged in its suit that the EPA was required to develop a plan to bring Southern California into compliance with the U.S. Clean Air Act.

The 1970 act stipulates that the EPA must promulgate rules when state and local officials fail to develop a plan which will meet air quality levels under the act. In 1988 state and local air quality officials admitted they could not meet the goals of the act.

The Coalition's suit, first filed in 1988, was successful at the federal circuit court level and the decision was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The EPA appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided not to hear the case in February, 1993, but instead ordered the EPA to develop the plan. One reason the Coalition for Clean Air brought the suit is to bring Southland air quality under a plan which would be enforced by a federal authority. State and local authorities -- the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the California Air Resources Board -- have no power to regulate trains, planes, ships and interstate trucks, said Dennis Zane, executive director of the coalition.

"As long as those sources were not being cleaned up, it creates a bigger burden on the local sources (of air pollution)," Zane said. The EPA plan "will assure that those sources have their fair share of the clean up."

AQMD spokesman Sam Atwood said those sources account for about 5.5 percent of the hydrocarbons and 16.7 percent of the nitrogen oxide emitted in the South Coast basin. Hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide are the major components of smog, Atwood said.

An official for the Air Transport Association, the trade group that represents the major airlines, and officials at both seaports expressed concern that the regulations could be costly to comply with and therefore drive trade and flights away from Southern California.

"If the federal regulations are as stringent as we fear, it could cause significant reduction of air travel into Southern California," said Richard Ketler, an attorney for the Washington, D.C.-based Air Transport Association.

Ezunial Burts, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, wrote to the EPA, saying he was concerned the regulations would affect the Los Angeles economy. Regulation "of trains and trucks which results in significant increases in costs to shippers could result in the diversion of cargo to other ports..." Burts wrote in a Nov. 1, 1993 letter.

"The diversion of cargo to other West Coast ports would not only result in the loss of jobs and tax revenues in Southern California, but would result in export of emissions and other environmental impacts to other West Coast areas," Burts wrote.

Howecamp said that under the plan, dirty-fuel-burning ships entering the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles would pay fees -- depending on the air pollution each vessels emits.

"We're looking at a fee-based mechanism to encourage cleaner traffic into the ports," Howecamp said.

He declined to specify what the fees would be, saying more details would be released on Feb. 15.

Trucks and trains which use the ports may be required to employ emission-reducing technology, Howecamp said. "They would be able to look at alternative fuels or retrofits of their engines," he said.

Under the plan, airlines would be given a certain limit on air-polluting emissions under a "bubble approach," Howecamp said.

"We're looking at a bubble not over the airport, but over the airlines," he said. "The airline would have a bubble over their air operations and their ground operations. The airline would be given a rate, based on the amount of air pollution per passenger mile, and they would be expected to live within certain limits."

Under the plan, "they could reduce their emissions as they see fit," Howecamp said. Airlines could reduce emissions by switching all their ground transport vehicles to non-emitting electric vehicles, for example, he said.

Howecamp would not say, however, what lower level would be required and whether airlines can meet that just by reducing ground vehicle sources.

Ketler of the ATA said there is concern that the reduced levels may be impossible to meet. "I guess the (airplane) engines that are clean-burning haven't been developed yet. The engine manufacturers don't have anything in the immediate future which we can turn to tomorrow and slap on our planes."

As a result, if the cap on airline emissions is strict, airlines would have no choice but to reduce flights into Los Angeles International Airport and the other commercial airports in L.A. County as well as John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

But Zane of the Coalition for Clean Air said he doesn't expect "the plan to create the kind of burdens you've heard about. ... I'm surprised to hear such excessive rhetoric when there hasn't been a draft released."