Foes Distorting Clean Air Plan, AQMD Charges

Alarmed by mounting opposition to a far-reaching plan to bring smoggy Southern California into compliance with federal clean air standards, South Coast Air Quality Management District officials on Friday bitterly assailed business and industry opponents and accused them of distorting the facts to mislead the public.

The accusations came just one week before a scheduled Dec. 16 showdown vote by the AQMD’s governing board and were clearly intended to counter an intensive lobbying campaign by major oil companies and an electric utility to delay adoption of the plan until next year.

Both Southern California Edison Co. and the Western Oil and Gas Assn. have each prepared alternatives to the district’s proposal that they said would bring the South Coast Air Basin into compliance with federal ozone standards faster than the AQMD plan and at far less cost. They said a delay is needed to afford the district’s board time to study the alternatives.

Contrasts Sharply

Meanwhile, the business-oriented California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance said the district’s proposal would cost $12.2 billion a year and cost 33,000 jobs after taking benefits into account. The estimate, prepared for the group by a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm, contrasts sharply with the AQMD’s cost estimate.

The district has pegged the annual cost of the first phase of its proposal at $2.6 billion, or 60 cents a person per year in the air basin, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

AQMD Executive Officer James M. Lents dismissed the industry estimates and alternative proposals as “a gush of hastily prepared computer simulations and questionable econometric equations, which in some cases totally distort fact and hence mislead decision-makers and the public.”

Lents also flatly rejected any delay. Lents’ positions were outlined in a written statement. He was not present Friday for a press conference where the AQMD’s charges were aired because his return to California from an air pollution conference in New York was delayed by a canceled flight.

Mike M. Hertel, manager of environmental affairs for Edison, said the utility had spent at least $1 million on its proposal.

‘Not an Attack’

“I would hate to say it was hastily prepared,” Hertel said. “Our plea is it doesn’t seem to us they’ve really had the time to look at (the Edison alternative) as it was meant to be--not an attack but help in coming up with an environmentally superior plan.”

An economic analysis of the plan paid for by the district and prepared by the USC School of Urban and Regional Planning proved more difficult for the district to explain. The $31,000 study found that initial air pollution regulations contemplated by the proposal would cost $5.6 billion and cost 16,400 jobs. Those figures, however, do not take into account the district’s independent estimate of an additional $7.4 billion in health benefits and economic savings due to cleaner air.

“From an economic analysis point of view, the proposed controls are too strong . . . because their total net costs are significantly greater than their total benefits,” the USC study said.

At the press conference, Steve Colome, an assistant professor at UC Irvine who is involved in a much larger health-effects benefit study for the district, said the USC conclusions that the cost of air pollution controls may be “excessive” was “inappropriate.”

The USC study did not begin until six weeks ago and was ordered only because state Sen. Ralph Dills (D-Gardena) called for an economic analysis of the district’s proposed plan. The district said it was not required by the California Environmental Quality Act to undertake such an analysis.

In his statement, Lents said the proposed Air Quality Management Plan, which would set the policy tone for specific air pollution controls to be adopted later, had been in the works five years. The plan envisions bringing the four-county South Coast Air Basin into compliance with federal clean air regulations within 20 years. Among other things, it calls for replacing gasoline cars with cleaner-burning vehicles that run on methanol and electricity and tough new controls on industrial polluters.

“This plan has been scrutinized, analyzed and debated in excruciating detail,” Lents said. “Now, inexplicably, comes a chorus of discordant voices urging further delay in adopting this plan. . . . What we are hearing is the same old litany from the same old industrial giants who historically have resisted any forward movement in tightening controls over their polluting operations,” Lents said.

Hard to Predict

AQMD board member Larry L. Berg told reporters Friday that he also would oppose a delay. He said a postponement would provide opponents with additional time to stall and lobby.

“I would not be opposed to a delay if I had some evidence that something was going to come out of the delay other than another paid study and another three weeks of phone calls, dinners, lunches and arm-twisting,” Berg said.

Berg and others said that board members have been intensively lobbied by opponents. He said that if the vote were held today, he believed that the AQMD board would approve the plan. But he said it would be hard to predict the outcome by next week in view of the lobbying.

Representatives of the Western Oil and Gas Assn. said that under their proposal, ozone--the main health-threatening ingredient of photochemical smog--would drop faster by the year 2000 than under the district’s plan. The industry proposal, its sponsors said, would also mean that 100,000 fewer people would be exposed to ozone by that year than under the district’s proposal. The association said its approach, which would concentrate on reducing hydrocarbon emissions instead of oxides of nitrogen, would mean a temporary savings to refiners of $800 million to $1 billion.

Edison said that under its plan, the district would be in compliance with the ozone standard within 10 years.

District officials, however, argue that the two industry proposals only address ozone pollution and would not as actively attempt to reduce other air pollutants that contribute to acid rain and acid fog, as well as small particulate matter that can lodge deeply in humans.

Twice Asked for Delay

Orange County city officials have been particularly critical of the proposed air quality plan, and Yorba Linda Mayor Pro Tem Henry W. Wedaa has twice asked the district to delay the vote on the measure. Several cities complained that requirements that jobs and new housing developments be nearer to each other would work an economic hardship and pose problems for city planners.

Wedaa, who is also a member of the AQMD governing board, said that while there was “clear unanimity” among Orange County cities for an aggressive clean-air plan, there had not been adequate time to evaluate the plan’s complexities. Los Angeles County has also asked for a delay.