Air Quality District Management Plan

As an Orange County resident concerned with clean air, I appreciate The Times’ continued support for the rational approach to cleaning up the air in Southern California embodied in the 1989 Air Quality Management Plan of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

However, as a board member of the Coalition for Clean Air, the major regional citizens’ watchdog group, I must applaud the recent decision of the state Air Resources Board (The Times, June 24) to delay approval of this plan for 60 days.

Why? Because the plan is still quite vague in its overall strategy for achieving clean air by 2007 and because we do not see adequate enforcement mechanisms in place. Further, the first regulation proposed by the South Coast AQMD would have delayed electric utility clean-up efforts from three to six years beyond those called for in the plan, so it’s not clear that the AQMD has the political will yet to crack down on big industrial air polluters.

It’s time to get serious about cleaning up the air in Southern California. It will make for an incredible economic boom in many dimensions, not the economic disaster forecast by the big business forces arrayed against the average citizen. However, the plan still needs more work to convince citizen activists that it will succeed.

One of the concerns small business ought to have is that large polluters are not let off the hook because of their superior firepower in the regulatory process. Recent events regarding Southern California Edison’s need to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides from its power plants in the South Coast Air Basin indicate the clout of large industrial air polluters.

Briefly, the plan calls for Edison to substantially reduce emission of nitrogen oxides by 1993. On June 14, 1989, an AQMD hearing panel recommended that Edison be allowed until 1996 (three extra years of pollution). The AQMD board will decide this issue in August.

The Coalition for Clean Air and the Orange County Clean Air Coalition are still pushing for the original 1993 deadline for Edison to clean up its act and its emissions. Concerned citizens should write to Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder in Santa Ana to express their interest in strong emission-control regulations for large utility and industrial air polluters, and particularly to hold Southern California Edison to the 1993 deadline contained in the Air Quality Management Plan. Wieder will be voting on the proposed regulation (No. 1135) concerning Edison in August.

JERRY YUDELSON

Garden Grove