After more than four hours of sometimes contentious testimony, Southern California’s air quality agency on Friday decided to wait a month before voting on a 15-year air pollution cleanup plan that relies heavily on voluntary compliance and cash incentives for industry.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District board voted 9-3 to delay a decision following remarks by new board member Sheila Kuehl, a Los Angeles County supervisor, who said the plan needed to be strengthened to ensure more pollution cuts.
“It still falls short in a number of ways,” Kuehl said. “There doesn’t seem to be, as my dentist would call them, teeth.”
Several board members also said they wanted to wait until March 3 because board member Clark Parker had to leave early to attend a funeral.
The delay allowed the board to avoid dealing with concerns over the plan’s lack of rules or emission reduction goals for the region’s ports, warehouses and railroad yards. Air district officials had instead planned to work with the cargo hauling and storage industries to secure voluntary emission reductions before going to rule-making mode.
Kuehl, a Democrat, introduced a motion that, among other provisions, would have required staff to draft regulations that would kick in should voluntary reductions not come to fruition.
She also wanted the district to seek legislative authority to require zero-emission vehicles for publicly owned fleets.
Republicans Dwight Robinson, a Lake Forest councilman; Shawn Nelson, an Orange County supervisor; and Janice Rutherford, a San Bernardino County supervisor, all said the plan should be approved as it was, and a delay was not necessary.
First proposed in June by new executive officer Wayne Nastri, the plan called for nearly $1 billion a year in cash incentives to get industry to retool with cleaner machinery.
The meeting at the air district headquarters in Diamond Bar drew about 500 people. About 200 had to watch from video screens in three overflow rooms and a cafeteria.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District regulates air pollution in Orange County and the urban portions of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Most speakers opposed the plan, saying it needed to have tougher rule-making to more quickly reduce emission, and it should not rely on tax dollars to pay industry incentives.
Many spoke of pollution-related illnesses they or their family members had suffered.
Esther Portillo of Riverside said her grandmother, who lived in Colton, recently died of lung cancer, and her mother-in-law has COPD or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and several of her nieces and nephews suffer from asthma.
“You have a choice to side with the polluters or to side with the people,” Portillo said to the board.
Plan opponents, many with the Sierra Club, rallied outside the air district building, holding signs depicting a bird wearing a gas mask and saying, “Please care.”
Philip Fine, the air district’s deputy executive officer, told the board that incentives and voluntary reductions are only part of the pollution cleanup plan.
“The rate of regulatory reductions in this plan is more than the previous plan,” Fine said.
The plan was supported by several business leaders, who argued it should be approved without any changes.
Tracy Hernandez, founding CEO of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, said the plan has been vetted and is the result of collaboration with affected businesses and other interested parties. It has the support of 300 employers in the federation.
“It is time to move this plan forward,” Hernandez said.
Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said the ports are dedicated to making more emissions reductions voluntarily, and the plan doesn’t need rules to force such pollution cuts.
The ports’ clean-air plans already have reduced diesel soot emissions by 85 percent and smog-causing nitrogen oxides by 50 percent, and more emission cuts will come, he said.
“We expect to make more breakthroughs.”
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