Residents voice concerns over pollution

Tariq Malik

HUNTINGTON BEACH -- A group of concerned residents met with

representatives from the South Coast Air Quality Management District on

Tuesday night to discuss the amount of air pollution caused by sanitation

and power plant operations in the city.

“We’re just trying, as a neighborhood, to get a handle on what is in

our air,” said John Scott, chairman of the Southeast Huntington Beach

Neighborhood Assn.

Mohsen Nazemi, a senior air quality engineering manager with the South

Coast Air Quality District, told residents the sanitation district’s

waste water treatment plant produced about 75 tons of the gas pollutant

nitrogen oxide this year, which must be reduced by 30%, as well as 45

tons of organic waste and 300 tons of carbon monoxide. Digester gases,

produces from treating solid waste and the emissions produced by the

plant, is burned in giant engines to produce power for the treatment

center, instead of being flared out into the open air, he added.

Sanitation officials said they are working to cut their air pollutant

production in half by 2004, and are working with residents who complain

about odors from the treatment center.

Officials as AES Corp., which owns a power plant on Newland Street,

added it has produced about 300 tons of nitrogen oxide this year and has

generally topped off at 450 tons a year in the recent past. The city’s

Planning Commission approved an AES plan to reduce those emissions

Tuesday, which will cut the nitrogen oxide production by 90%, said Ed

Blackford, AES Huntington Beach president.

Residents told Nazemi they sometime feel sandwiched between the city’s

two biggest polluters, though the air quality representatives assured

them that the sanitation district and power plant, like most coastal

agencies, traditionally stay within air quality guidelines.