Air District Gives Some Breathing Room to Business

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The regional air quality authority took steps last week to lighten fees for hundreds of local polluting businesses that will be assessed because the region failed to meet federal standards.

Federally imposed fees were incorporated into the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and apply to major polluting facilities in areas that have not met federal ozone standards by 2010. The Southern California region, one of the two smoggiest in the nation along with Houston, has not even come close to meeting the standard.

The so-called Clean Air Act “non-attainment fee” would be assessed on 400-plus facilities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties that emit more than 10 tons a year of smog-forming compounds into the air. The facilities include power plants, refineries, food-processing plants, machine shops and printers. The fee, which is adjusted for inflation, is now pegged at about $8,800 per ton of pollutants emitted; the first fees would be due in 2012.

The Clean Air Act requires the South Coast Air Quality Management District to impose these fees when the region fails to meet air quality standards. Failure to do so could result in the loss of billions of dollars in federal transportation funds.

To prepare for the fee assessments, the district has spent the last 18 months developing a rule to implement the fees. Initial drafts were rejected by the district’s governing board as too harsh on local businesses and were sent back for revision.

The agency last week unveiled its latest version, which attempts to cut businesses some breaks. First, the emissions baseline has been lowered, which district spokesman Sam Atwood said would result in lower fees – although that point is questioned by an industry spokesman.

In certain cases, the proposal also allows lower annual permit fees for businesses that get hit with these non-attainment fees.

“The recession is a major factor that prompted the board to send this back to us, so we’ve tried to take the economy into account,” Atwood said.

Also, he said many facilities have already installed the most advanced pollution control equipment and thus can only cut emissions by cutting production. “That’s something we would like to avoid,” he said.

The proposal is being greeted with cautious optimism from business representatives.

“This is a step in the right direction,” said Bill LaMarr, executive director of the California Small Business Alliance, which represents 10 trade associations with members subject to regulation by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

LaMarr said he wasn’t sure that lowering the emissions baseline would lead to lower fees, and in fact could produce the opposite result.

LaMarr said he has focused his efforts over the last year in trying to convince members of Congress to revisit this portion of the Clean Air Act Amendments to wipe out the non-attainment fees altogether.

Power Plant Cuts

Power plants near the coast would have to slash their use of ocean water for cooling by 90 percent over the next 14 years to reduce impacts on marine life, according to a proposed regulation unveiled last week by the California Water Resources Control Board.

The regulation covers 19 power plants along California’s coastline, including six in Los Angeles County and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in northern San Diego County, which is owned and operated by Southern California Edison, a subsidiary of Rosemead-based Edison International.

The Department of Water & Power operates three of the Los Angeles County power plants affected by the regulation, AES Corp. owns and operates two others, one in Redondo Beach and one in Long Beach. The sixth plant is owned and operated by El Segundo Power LLC.

All 19 power plants covered by the regulation draw an estimated total of 15 billion gallons a day of seawater to use as coolant. But in drawing such huge amounts of water, they also suck in small marine life, including fish, larvae and plankton. The water board drafted the regulation to comply with the federal Clean Water Act, which requires updating of technology to reduce the impact of pollution on marine life.

Under the proposed rule, the plants must meet the 90 percent goal by available technology. In some cases, this may mean switching from using seawater to using cooled air.

The state Water Resources Control Board is scheduled to consider the regulation at its May 4 meeting; the public comment period ends April 13.

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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