3 of 4 in State Would Pay to Help Clean Up Smog, Poll Shows

About three of every four Californians would be willing to pay an additional half cent in gasoline taxes and see new cars cost as much as $500 more to help clean up the air, according to a poll released Tuesday by members of the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s governing board.

The telephone survey of 500 state residents indicates that the majority of Californians are dissatisfied with the job state and regional agencies like the district are doing in the fight against air pollution, said board members Larry L. Berg and Thomas Heinsheimer in a press conference at district headquarters in El Monte.

Berg and Heinsheimer used the release of the poll to issue a call for more aggressive action in the Los Angeles basin that, they said, might include banning diesel-fueled trucks from the freeways during peak commuter hours, as well as converting bus and truck fleets to low-polluting methanol fuel.

“It’s time to go to the public and say ‘here’s a far-reaching program; we want your support’,” said Berg, who, as director of USC’s Institute of Politics and Government, oversaw the poll.

Like other air pollution control officials in recent months, Berg and Heinsheimer emphasised that the district--which covers Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties--is not going to come up to federal clean air standards by the December, 1987 deadline.

Urges ‘Aggressive Approach’

“We’re not going to meet the standards next year,” said Berg, adding, “I don’t think we’ll ever meet the standards . . . (without) a new, aggressive approach.”

Heinsheimer, currently vice chairman of the board and considered a leading candidate for the now-vacant chairmanship, called for consideration of new laws that would give the district or a similar “new and more powerful local agency” the authority to “ban trucks from freeways during hours of maximum commuter traffic” when pollutant emission is greatest.

He said that thought also should be given to forcing the conversion of all buses and trucks operating in the Los Angeles Basin to methanol.

The two backed up their position with these poll results:

- Asked to rate the performance of government in battling air pollution, 27% said it was excellent or good, while 67% called it fair or poor. The rest did not know, or gave no answer.

- 75% support a proposed half-cent increase in gasoline taxes to be used to reduce pollution; 24% oppose.

- 74% say that automobile manufacturers should be required to produce vehicles that can run on the cleanest available fuel, such as methanol, even if that would mean a $500 increase in the price of a new car; 24% disagree.

- 73% think that commercial vehicles should be denied licenses after 1990 unless they run on methanol or other relatively clean fuels; 20% oppose that notion.

- 71% back a proposal that a state bond issue of $500 million be placed on the 1988 ballot to help pay for replacement by local transit districts of diesel buses with methanol-fueled buses; 23% say no.

The poll, conducted Nov. 8-17, has a margin of error of plus or minus 5%.

The statements of Berg, who was appointed to the 14-member board by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), and Heinsheimer, who represents the cities within Los Angeles County, met with a mixed reaction from a spokesman for a clean-air group.

Evaluation Need

“I would generally agree that the public puts a very high premium on clean air and would support modest increases in the cost of living, but what needs to be evaluated is the relative cost-effectiveness of the measures they’re suggesting,” said Mark Abramowitz of the Santa Monica-based Coalition for Clean Air.

“To start blaming diesels (for failing to meet the 1987 ozone standards) is a smoke screen,” he said in an interview Tuesday. Instead, Abramowitz argued, board members should reconsider their opposition to stronger measures against stationary sources of pollution and to forcing employers to provide incentives for employee car pooling.

Release of Berg’s poll comes at a time when the local district, which oversees the nation’s worst smog region, is under scrutiny by federal and state agencies for failing to meet the 1987 requirements.