The San Francisco Chronicle
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S.F. Coalition Sues EPA Over Air Quality
Bay Area in violation of U.S. rules, group says

Jane Kay
Tuesday, January 9, 2001

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is failing to protect Bay Area residents from unsafe levels of smog, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday by a coalition of public-interest groups.

Bay View Hunters Point Community Advocates, Latino Issues Forum and four other groups filed the suit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco noting that the Bay Area is in violation of federal ozone, or smog, standards.

As required by the federal Clean Air Act, local regulators and the state have developed a plan mapping out how to cut smog. But the EPA missed the October deadline for approving or disapproving this plan.

The environmentalists, who call the plan inadequate, are asking the court to compel the EPA to act.

"We're simply asking the EPA to take any action, but we promise to be back in the courts in a flash if the EPA dares to approve this inadequate plan," said Deborah Reames, lead attorney at the California office of Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, which is representing the groups. "The local agencies year after year in developing plans continue to rely on these Pollyanna expectations of super-clean cars to excuse them from taking any of the tough steps to control emissions from refineries, other stationery sources and vehicles."

Authors of the plan are the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Association of Bay Area Governments and Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

The state Air Resources Board approved it in 1999.

Bringing suit are Communities for a Better Environment and the Sierra Club, which sued more than a decade ago to curtail smog, as well as Urban Habitat Program and the Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund.

In November, these groups petitioned the EPA to disapprove the plan and officially determine that the Bay Area has failed to attain its deadline to meet ozone standards. Such a determination can bring such sanctions as the loss of federal highway funds.

The groups also asked the EPA to make a finding that the MTC hasn't implemented key measures to get people out of cars and onto public transit.

In the absence of any action from the EPA, the groups filed yesterday's lawsuit.

In response, Leo Kay, an EPA spokesman in San Francisco, said, "In a nutshell, they're right. We did miss the deadline."

Kay added: "We're going to come out with our proposed rule-making within a month. We do already know that we're not going to be able to fully approve the plan. There were three ozone violations this past summer. Obviously, the plan needs some measures that would prevent us from having any ozone violations the following summer."

In 2000, the Bay Area had three federal ozone violations, including one that was 27 percent above the national standard.

Ground-level ozone, which forms when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds combine and are heated up by the sun, can cause shortness of breath, chest pain, coughing, nausea and throat irritation.

Roughly half of the pollutants that form ozone come from cars and trucks, and the rest from refineries, power plants, fuel and solvent evaporation and other big plants.

At the Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates on Third and Revere streets, Olin Webb, executive director, said, "The EPA is letting the system slide on the ambient air. We say, enough is enough. Let's do something about it."

The group "got involved because of the diesel pollution from the Muni buses, the air blowing off the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and two freeways cutting through our community," said Webb. "Anything that pertains to injustice to this community and everyone in the Bay Area, we try to get involved."

Because of concerns over the frequency of asthma cases among the young in southeastern San Francisco, the community's Health and Environmental Assessment Task Force and the San Francisco Health Department have been measuring the air quality at George Washington Carver Elementary School, the shipyard and behind the PG&E plant on Evans Street.

Federal law requires states to submit to the EPA plans that contain strategies to meet federal ozone standards. In the Bay Area it will be up to the air district and the MTC to implement those plans.

Regulators from the air district, MTC and the Association of Bay Area Governments as well as the state sent letters to the EPA in December, saying they had put in place all the promised measures and acknowledging they knew more needed to be done.

Steve Heminger, MTC executive director, said his agency was working on a submission that would include new strategies to control pollutants.

Will Taylor, a spokesman for the air district, said, "We have already informed the EPA that we intend to submit a revision by June. We're confident that available measures can bring us back to attaining the ozone standard, but we need public support for improved smog check programs, energy conservation and greater use of public transportation."