EPA Proposes Easing Air Pollution Deadline : Plan Would Give L.A. Basin Up to 25 Years to Reduce Smog but Under Tougher Standards

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a controversial plan to give the smoggy Los Angeles Basin up to 25 more years to comply with federal clean air standards that legally should be met by the end of this year.

Officials said Thursday that the proposal by EPA Administrator Lee Thomas would require tougher pollution controls to achieve annual gains in exchange for the deadline extension.

The plan to delay the federal Clean Air Act’s Dec. 31 compliance deadline for reducing health-threatening levels of ozone and carbon monoxide would also cover at least 59 other metropolitan areas. The new deadlines would vary from three to 25 years, depending on the severity of the smog problem. Areas with the most intractable air pollution problems, such as the Los Angeles basin, would be given the most time.

The EPA acknowledged that the plan could be blocked by legal challenges or superseded by congressional action. Nonetheless, EPA spokesman David Cohen said in Washington that agency attorneys have concluded that the existing Clean Air Act permits Thomas’ proposed policy.

Effect Could Be Delayed

“It’s a fairly tight reading of a loosely worded act,” Cohen said. The policy could not take effect before next spring because it is subject to formal rule-making procedures.

Under the current law, the EPA must impose a construction ban on major new sources of pollution in areas that cannot comply with the Dec. 31 standards. Thomas has long attempted to avoid sanctions. By extending the deadline, the EPA said, Thomas hopes to give a break to regions that have made efforts to improve air quality, even though they have not met the standard.

As a condition of extending the compliance deadline, Thomas will ask regions to impose new controls that will reduce air pollution in increments of 3% a year from 1987 levels--a regimen that federal, state and local officials said would be difficult to achieve and require air pollution control efforts surpassing anything that has been undertaken thus far.

Thomas is scheduled to formally announce details of the proposed policy on Tuesday in Washington. But, Thomas himself offered glimpses of the proposal earlier this week during a speech in Chicago to the American Petroleum Institute--and reaction from Capitol Hill began to build on Thursday.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of a House subcommittee that has jurisdiction over air pollution matters, charged Thursday that the EPA plan was “flagrantly illegal.”

“I don’t think they have that authority,” Waxman said. “I think it will lead to litigation and eventually the courts will throw it out.”

Waxman pointed to a decision last week by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that ordered the EPA to enforce the Dec. 31 deadline. That suit was filed by clean-air advocate Mark Abramowitz who challenged an EPA plan to extend the deadline provided that smoggy regions made “reasonable extra efforts” to reduce air pollution. Abramowitz could not be reached for comment.

James Lents, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, said, “We don’t understand how they can find the reasonable extra efforts program illegal but this program legal. It’s taken some creative interpretation of the law which we think may be too creative.”

Sets New Deadline

EPA officials noted that Thomas’ proposed plan, in effect, establishes a new deadline for meeting air-quality standards, whereas the old program of reasonable extra efforts did not. They also noted that a construction ban on major new sources of pollution would be imposed even on regions with approved plans for cleaning the air if they cannot show that the standards will be met within five years.

If Thomas’ proposal should survive legal challenges and not be superseded by congressional action, metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles may find it difficult to comply.

Reducing ozone levels by 3% each year from 1987 levels could be expected to force hard choices on local policy makers. The EPA proposal does not tell smoggy regions how to reduce smog, only that they must. Failure to do so would open them to the possibility not only of a construction ban on major new sources of pollution but a cutoff in federal sewer, clean air and highway funds.

The standards were enacted because ozone and carbon monoxide had been shown to threaten human health. In the last several years, more recent studies of health effects have indicated that even the current ozone standard may not provide a margin of safety for healthy adults who exercise heavily.

Standard Exceeded

The ozone standard is .12 parts per million parts of air for one hour. That standard is exceeded 164 days a year in the South Coast Air Basin, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. At times, ozone levels reach as much as .33 parts per million. However, the number of days the South Coast Air Basin met the standard went up 17% between 1979 and 1986.

The federal carbon monoxide standard is 9 parts per million averaged over eight hours. The standard is exceeded in about one-fourth of the South Coast Air Basin, with the largest concentrations in heavily traveled portions of Los Angeles and Orange counties.

EPA, state and local officials said Thursday that it will be difficult--but not impossible--to reduce ozone levels by 3% a year from 1987 levels. The 3% reduction would be in addition to ongoing air quality gains resulting from federally imposed smog control devices on cars, and state vehicle emissions and inspection programs such as California’s Smog Check program.

Bruce Jordan, chief of the EPA’s ambient standards branch in Washington, said, “In the long run, sure it’s going to be difficult. It’s not going to be easy. I’m sure it’s going to mean controls well beyond what we think of as traditional controls.”

‘Very Challenging’

California Air Resources Board spokesman Bill Sessa said in Sacramento that the 3% annual reduction would be “very challenging.” He added that it would be more difficult for a state like California to achieve 3% reductions because it has already imposed controls tougher than those found in much of the rest of the country. A state that has not had a stringent air pollution control program would find it much easier to get a 3% reduction, Sessa said.

Lents said there are areas of air pollution, however, where federal action is needed to help comply with the 3% reduction standard. For example, he said, half of the trucks that pass through the South Coast Air Basin originate outside the basin. “We need the federal government’s help in tightening down on them,” he said.

Still, both Sessa and Lents said that a 20- to 25-year period to clean up the Los Angeles Basin’s air is far more reasonable than the Dec. 31 deadline in the Clean Air Act.

“Most of what Thomas has proposed is pretty consistent with things we’ve asked for. We have long believed that California needed more time to meet ozone standards and that there should be more flexibility in how compliance with the clean air act is determined,” Sessa said.

Thomas’s proposal comes at a time when Congress has been stalemated over competing legislation for far-reaching changes in the Clean Air Act, first enacted in 1969.

Little Hope for Changes

Lawmakers acknowledged, however, that there is little hope that major changes will be enacted. As a fallback position, Congress may simply authorize a short-term extension of the deadline to buy time for lawmakers to work out a compromise on a long-term reauthorization of the Clean Air Act.

Waxman is proposing an eight-month extension. Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) is calling for a two-year extension.

But a major overhaul appears unlikely this year, Waxman said. “We have a number of controversial issues which involve many competing interests and pressures,” he said.

Among them are differences between the Midwest and Northeast over provisions to control acid rain. Waxman said that some Midwestern representatives are opposed to tougher controls. He added that controls on air toxics have stirred opposition from chemical companies.