Southland builders say that new dust regulations will cause delays.

Southland construction industry leaders claim tough dust and exhaust restrictions due to be imposed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District Feb. 1 will delay badly needed freeway, sewage and water projects in Los Angeles County.

That is because the new restrictions require contractors to measure invisible dust on construction sites with sophisticated, expensive electronic equipment that can find microscopic airborne particles smaller than 10 microns, about the thickness of human hair. The limit on these particles in the air at a construction site is 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

Contractors can be fined up to $25,000 a day every time the AQMD detects construction activity is kicking up microscopic airborne particles in excess of that amount.

To avoid the $25,000-per-infraction fines, some large contractors say they will not work on windy days. They said they fear the AQMD's monitoring procedure cannot accurately determine how much of the microscopic airborne dust measured on their job site is blowing in from another site.

It is these microscopic dust particles that researchers say lodge in the lungs of humans and cause respiratory ailments, said Claudia Keith, a spokeswoman for the Diamond Bar-based AQMD.

The tougher AQMD dust restrictions also mean that contractors must spend additional money to buy monitoring equipment and hire technicians to monitor the dust particles in the air at their construction sites.

That means they will increase their bids, which will raise the cost of infrastructure jobs. But it also will mean work will stop on windy days, construction company officials.

To comply with the tough new AQMD regulations, contractors must buy or rent "anemometers" to measure wind speed and direction, as well as the number of microscopic particles in the air. They also must hire technicians to monitor the gauges, according to the regulations. Contractors can be hit with a $25,000 fine for not having dust-measuring equipment on site, for not having technicians to monitor that equipment or for exceeding the dust limits.

Nobody yet knows the exact cost to construction companies of complying with the new regulations, but the required monitoring gauges cost $10,000 each and major earth-moving jobs can require many of them. On public-sector jobs, contractors will undoubtedly pass along those additional costs to taxpayers.

On a large public works project, such as a freeway or water project, the contractor may have to buy 10 to 12 of the anemometers and pay for regular monitoring, said Ed Hughes, vice president of San Bernardino-based Kasler Corp.

"The new restrictions are absurd. Nobody can comply with them," Hughes said.

"We are completing a $300 million contract on the Century Freeway near Los Angeles International Airport. On days when it is too windy, we won't work because we won't risk the fines," Hughes said.

Some 2,000 workers are now employed on the $600 million of contract work in progress on the Century Freeway. Each of those workers makes an average wage of $200 per day.

"If the project is shut down for a day, that's $400,000 in wages that doesn't get paid that week," Kasler said.

Eventually the work gets done at the end of the contract. But when the job stops, it slows down the flow of money and that hurts the local economy, Kasler added.

Mike Ladwig, area manager for Los Angeles-based Kiewit Construction Co., said the new regulations will make costs rise by hundreds of thousands of dollars on major earth-moving projects.

"We were awarded a large bid to do some work for the Metropolitan Water District on one of its facilities in Riverside. The new dust restrictions put upon us drives up the cost (on jobs like this) by hundreds of thousands of dollars," Ladwig said.

Kiewit also must spend extra dollars meeting AQMD requirements on its work expanding the Los Angeles Public Work Department's Hyperion sewage treatment plant, Ladwig said. As such, the higher costs will be passed on to the Los Angeles Public Works Department.

The tough AQMD restrictions have also brought about procedural changes. At construction sites where rock is crushed and sorted, contractors must constantly apply water to keep down dust. Previously, contractors had not applied water to the materials being crushed. This not only costs construction companies and, in turn, customers, more money for equipment, but it slows down the job, Ladwig said.

"The cost of compliance will be built into bids. But it's kind of ironic that those government-imposed restrictions will drive up the cost of infrastructure projects that are funded from government budgets," Ladwig said.

Ted Page, president of the Los Angeles County Associated General Contractors, said the new AQMD restrictions will slow down construction projects that the building industry had hoped would help replace some of the 200,000 construction jobs lost in California in the past 18 months.

"Southern California employment in heavy construction is already the lowest I've ever seen, and I'm a native and almost 60 years old," Page said.

Builders hope AQMD officials will be lenient for a few months after the tougher restrictions kick in. But those hopes appear futile. Bill Kelly, a spokesman for the AQMD, said 1993 is an "experimental" year for tougher air quality standards passed in November, and that he does not foresee any compromise on the new standards.

"The former standard focused on visible dust particles. The new restrictions focus on the fine (invisible) dust particles and exhaust particles from on-site construction equipment, such as power generators," Kelly said.

As tough as the new AQMD standards seem, they are flawed, critics contended. Al Gosselin, president of Glendale-based Pollution Research & Control Corp., said the new standards will be hard to validate, even though he stands to make money off the tougher requirements. His company makes and sells gauges that monitor dust. He said the gauges sell for $10,000 each, but questioned their effectiveness.

"Monitoring it is one thing. Doing something about it is another," said Gosselin. Historically, sprinkling the construction site with water has traditionally met local dust requirements. But watering down the site, or treating it with chemicals, will do little to take the minute dust particles out of the air because most of them float in from unmonitored spots, such as vacant lots and fields.

Jim Goepel, a consultant for the environmental division of Jacobs Engineering Group, said the stricter monitoring requirements mean more consulting fees for companies like his. He predicts they will hire consultants to determine how much AQMD compliance will cost so they can build those additional expenses into their bids, Goepel said.