AQMD's Carol Coy Touts State-Federal Cooperation As Key To Improving Air Quality

Carol, how clean is the air in Southern California in 2004?

Air quality has certainly dramatically improved the past thirty years here is Southern California, but we still have a long way to go to actually achieve air that is healthy to breathe. AQMD issued a press release just at the beginning of the month that shows that, thanks to the cooler weather that we have had this summer, we have actually experienced our cleanest smog season in twenty years.

However, unlike the previous summer, where we had some very unusually hot weather and had very poor air quality, we had much cooler weather, and even the recent rains in October have helped us have cleaner air this summer. Despite that, the trend here is still of concern, because back in 1977, we actually had 121 stage one episodes, and they were absolutely lung scorching. I was here in college, and it hurt when you actually inhaled deeply. You had splitting pain in your lungs as you walked between classes. 121 days is more than one out of three days, but in the last six years, we have only had one episode, so there has been dramatic improvement.

The EPA has now switched from not only the one-hour standard, but has added a new eight-hour standard, which is more health-protective. We had just this year 88 days in which we exceeded the new eight-hour ozone standard. So, we have to reduce that number down to zero by 2021 to meet the federally mandated deadline.

With goods movement traffic through the Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports dramatically growing, what is AQMD's role regarding air quality? Are economic development priorities inconsistent with AQMD's environmental priorities?

When you look at the ports, they are together our single largest stationary source of air pollution, and I think that it is important to note that economic development at the port and a clean environment are not mutually exclusive goals. Quite the contrary, they go hand in hand. We have pioneered a number of cost-effective rules and solutions that reduce thousands of tons of pollutants from businesses and industry, and that kind of cooperation and innovation really needs to be employed now at the ports to preserve our quality of life and allow our economy to grow, while the ports actually are processing more and more cargo into the national economy.

Carol, MIR includes an interview with NRDC's Gail Feuer in this issue, and past editions have included interviews with Jim Hankla of the Port of Long Beach and others from the Port of L.A. They each claim that the ports really have little legal control of most of the emitters of pollutants. They argue that truckers, railroads, shipping companies, et.al. are the proper subjects of regulators, not the port authorities. Your response?

Actually, that is a pretty good compound question there. Let's go back to one point that we have to understand here about regional air quality. Fully 75 percent of the smog-forming pollutants here in our basin come from mobile sources. AQMD's authority under law is almost entirely restricted to stationary sources. So, when you look at the overall air quality problem, of which the ports are a very good example, to be able address the mobile source emission issue requires really creative solutions that require the cooperation of both the state and federal governments, as well as the industries themselves, in order to achieve emission reductions there.

Down in the ports, AQMD has really had a very aggressive program there for years, and we have worked with industry and the community residents to craft coke emissions regulations that are really the most stringent in the world, and our inspectors even enforce visible emissions regulations on smoking ships once they are at berth. But, when you look at what is going to happen when goods movement increases through the ports, there are all of those yard hustlers and various equipment within the marine terminals that are basically mobile sources, and as they are unloading and moving around containers, we are of course loading them onto trucks and railroads. So, you are looking at sources where we have to have help from state and federal government to get meaningful emission reductions out of these mobile sources.

Do we have the government we need in Southern California to realize the goals of both a healthy environment and a thriving economy? Are our governmental institutions designed to deliver what the public expects?

Well, I believe that if the state and federal governments, if those entities, the agencies responsible, and the state legislature and Congress stepped up to bat here, the current public institutions could get this problem solved. The problem is that as a local entity, we are doing everything within the scope of our authority to reduce stationary-source emissions, and we are now pushing the envelope to cut mobile-source emissions, so that we can get the smog problem licked here. But the going is tough, as you've just pointed out, because for example, the U.S. Supreme Court, earlier this year, struck down the major portions of the AQMD Clean Fleet rules that require that fleet operators purchase clean-fuel models when they replace vehicles. Then, just in this latest legislative session, in the face of some really aggressive lobbying by the port, rail, and trucking interests, we were not successful in getting the state legislature to adopt what was a really reasonable approach to reduce emissions from those sources.

As I've said, we have got to get assistance from the federal and state governments and our elected officials in both state and federal houses to help us get this problem under control, as we're in the face of so much cargo movement increase.

Carol, The Long Beach City Council recently tabled for another day consideration of the EIR for their port's Pier J. What happened here, and what was the role of AQMD regarding public deliberation of this matter?

On Pier J, what has happened is that AQMD actually has been corresponding with the Port of Long Beach for over a year. We pointed out shortcomings within the CEQA document for the Pier J proposed development. What it boils down to is that the port really underestimated the air pollution that would result from the proposed expansion. The port's analysis actually assumed that in the year 2007, all of the heavy-duty truck emissions would be reduced by 75 percent. But in fact, that is not true. That would only be true for a number of new truck engines that were manufactured for 2007 and subsequent model years in compliance with the new federal EPA regulations. So, here you've got US EPA federal regulations impacting those truck engines. The truck engines are basically in service for not just years but decades, as you can see if look down at the truck traffic through the port. The number of trucks with the lower emissions would be really small initially, and the emissions reductions from all of the fleet that is going to be servicing the port would have been far less than the 75 percent on which the CEQA documents were based.

So, is there a light at the end of the tunnel in regard to the ports?

The light at the end of the tunnel is that the our one-hour ozone readings continue to trend downward, with just that blip last year of unusually hot weather, and what you've got is a populace that is becoming more and more interested and involved in air pollution control and in emissions reductions. So, we are trying to have a number of education programs where the public joins in the fight for clean air. We try to empower them by sponsoring a number of programs that both inform and give options so that individuals can join the clean air fight by choosing to use products and choosing activities that are less polluting. Down in the ports, you see a number of creative programs being voiced where we are looking at potential emissions credits for early reductions. We see a huge reduction in port particulate emission that was due to coke and coal handling. We are seeing school buses in our area, the four counties, being converted to CNG, compressed natural gas, with the lowest emissions profile. As our fleet becomes newer and newer, we are seeing more fuel-efficient vehicles as well as those that emit much lower pollution per mile driven. So, throughout all of this we are beginning to see this trend keep on a decline so that we move to clean air in the long term here.

Drawing to a close here, I want to talk about diesel, which is everpresent in this basin and out at the ports. Some have suggested that there are new fuel additives that can significantly decrease emissions, and some may even have CARB Approval. Do you give any credence to those efforts to introduce fuel additives to try to deal with the aging diesel fleet in the basin?

Certainly, our technology advancement office is aware of the additives, and I believe that the California State Air Resources Board has had a considerable program of investing research into looking into what can be done in the way of fuel additives. I haven't talked with Chung Lu, the head of technology advancement, recently about the additive issue, but I know a number of them have been under study.

Carol, if you were made regional czar and required to balance regional environment and economic growth priorities, what would you be advocating in addition to what is already being done by AQMD?

I would certainly bring together, not only the regional, but also state and federal, authorities together, and sit down and mark out a plan much like our own regional air quality plan. We have lined that out within our AQMD, but bring the state and federal authorities to the table and get a real plan with each of their sources. CARB has taken authority for some part of this emission pie, but what we need is the same type of commitment from the federal government as well, and we need specific commitments from the state, so that all of the pieces of the emission pie, which includes these federal and state mobile sources. There must be a real and enforceable plan with solid progress and solid goal points, so that together we move the region into compliance with the federally mandated clean air standards. Those standards are set to protect the health of the residents.