The Trail Grows Murkier

Researchers from the world over started to measure smog in Southern California last month to freshen up a data base that has not been revised in 15 years. They had to to put it off because there wasn’t enough smog to measure.

They will be back later this month to gather their new readings on sources of smog that will provide the technical justification for future air-pollution controls.

The skies probably will be murkier. By the time the researchers finish their analysis, so may the rules under which Southern California and the rest of the United States will cope with air pollution over the next decade.

The Clean Air Act, which sets federal standards for air quality, will expire at the end of this year. So will the time that Congress gave the nation to meet those standards. Because 70 cities have no hope of meeting the deadline, bills have been introduced in Washington to extend the time by three years for most of them and by 10 years for the really hard cases like Los Angeles. In return for the extra time, both the Senate and the House propose tightening up pollution controls.

Both Senate and House bills face uphill battles between opposition from business, which argues that they are too tough, and from environmentalists, who want harsher treatment of polluters and a broadening of the act to include acid rain and airborne toxic substances.

If the combined opposition leads to a compromise--perhaps a short extension of the deadline, with the real battles to be fought after next year’s elections--Southern California could find itself back where it started in the early 1960s, when it had to blaze a trail through the smog pretty much on its own.

Blazing a trail may be more difficult this time. The Greater Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, for example, is arguing that power plants, refineries and other major sources of pollution have paid for their fair share of pollution controls. It is time, the chamber says, for the South Coast Air Quality Management District to go after lesser sources of pollution that account for something more than 80% of the dirt in Southern California’s air.

Much of that 80% comes from cars. But some of it comes from oil-based paints, gasoline-powered lawnmowers and leaf-blowers, dry cleaners and hundreds of other items common to the Southern California scene.

The air-quality district, which recently increased both its budget and its inspection force, knows as well as the chamber does that one inspector is more effective in checking pollution controls at an oil refinery than in wandering around neighborhoods ticketing people using oil-based paints that emit hydrocarbons--an important ingredient in the recipe for smog.

There are shortcuts to make it possible to deal with minor sources without having inspectors lurking in neighborhoods. One was included in a measure sponsored by Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside) that would revise the air-quality district’s policy board to make it more responsive to voters, to give the state or the district authority to cut down on the clouds of diesel smoke from buses and to give it other powers that it does not now have to clean up the air.

The legislation would have authorized a tax on the pollutants in paint so that buyers who felt strongly about using a paint with an oil base rather than a water base could have paid the price. Lobbyists for business, who know a shortcut when they see one, got that feature knocked out of the bill.

Working at cross-purposes like that is the surest way for Southern California to guarantee that in the years to come the world’s smog researchers can find dirty air any time they care to drop by.