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California's Air Resources Board today released long-awaited draft regulations to clean up big rig pollution that aggravates asthma, cancer and heart disease across the state. The rules, which are scheduled to take effect in 2010, would affect toxic diesel emissions from more than a million heavy-duty trucks that operate in the state, many of them transporting merchandise from the massive complex of ports in Long Beach and Los Angeles.
Air Board chairman Mary D. Nichols predicted that slashing truck pollution would "improve both public health and the economy, especially when you account for the reduced health care costs thanks to fewer hospital visits, mortalities and work days lost, caused by exposure to big rig diesel exhaust."
Diesel truck transport from the ports and from the state's huge agricultural industry in the San Joaquin Valley is the California's largest source of smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions and toxic particulates. The ports recently banned the dirtiest, older trucks. But the San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles areas are violating federal air quality standards, which cannot be met without stricter overall truck emission rules, air officials say.
In a report this week, the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group, found that available technology can dramatically reduce emissions as well as the fuel consumption that increases global warming. "Truckers can make relatively simple modifications to their rigs, save themselves a lot of money over the long run, and save us all from pollution," said Don Anair, UCS senior vehicles analyst.
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California biofuel supplier Pacific Ethanol Inc. on Friday launched its newest plant at the Port of Stockton amid a throng of dignitaries and well-wishers. The facility can make up to 60 million gallons of the corn-based biofuel per year, making it the largest of the state's five operating ethanol plants.
The Sacramento-based company expects the facility to process 21 million bushels of corn a year, and hopes 20% of that will be grown locally, which would reduce corn imports from the Midwest. In addition to ethanol, the $150-million plant will produce 500,000 tons of wet distillers grain for local dairies to use as feed.
California's gasoline contains nearly 6% ethanol, amounting to about 1 billion gallons a year. Pacific says it supplies about 20% of that, through in-state production and imports. State regulators have approved a new fuel formula that would include 10% ethanol in California gasoline beginning in 2010.
Corn-based ethanol remains a hotly debated subject, but even with its flaws, it is arguably preferable to gasoline, which spews asthma-causing particulates and smog-producing gases.
And it is still the only biofuel available today that's capable of displacing large amounts of gasoline in our existing cars and trucks. It's telling that oil refiner Valero Energy Corp. recently lamented that U.S. gasoline demand was down 1.5%, but because of ethanol blending, consumption of the raw gasoline blendstock had actually dropped 3%.
Critics are pushing for other fuels, such as cellulose-derived ethanol, which would dodge the food-versus-fuel fury by not using corn. Pacific's new corn-processing plant earned more than $600,000 in Pacific Gas & Electric rebates because it built in more efficient lighting and motors, heat recovery devices, and other energy-saving technologies. By selling wet distillers grain locally, it eliminated an energy-intensive drying process and reduced transportation-related emissions.
A host of California companies are pressing ahead with what could be better technologies and processes, among them BlueFire Ethanol and Primafuel Inc. What's more, California's low-carbon fuel standard will measure the full environmental impact of the entire menu of fuels -- and only those that can ratchet down their carbon footprint along with the state's requirements will survive here. The still-evolving rules could go into effect in 2010.
-- Elizabeth Douglass
Photo: Pacific Ethanol plant manager Lyndon Jones, right, consults with scheduler Glenn Palso Friday at the Stockton facility. Credit: Phil Di Marino/ColorNet Inc., for Pacific Ethanol.
 If you don't get it, or even if you do, the Golden State's most brilliant minds are ready to help.
Beginning Monday, California is serving up a feast of global warming information, its Fifth Annual Climate Change Conference, with three days of speeches, panels and presentations streamed live on video. No state has done more to examine the causes, effects and possible adaptation to climate change than California, which enacted the nation's first and most stringent greenhouse gas control law.
At the Sacramento conference, more than 70 scientific researchers and policymakers will present their findings and analyses, focusing on issues with California-specific perspectives. Will the sea rise? Will species die out? Will agriculture suffer? Will water supplies dwindle? Will forests burn? Experts from such institutions as the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the California Air Resources Board, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and a passel of universities will weigh in with the latest information.
Sunbathers take note: There is even a presentation on "Estimating the Potential Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Southern California Beaches."
Presentations can be downloaded from the website. And video of the conference will be archived on the climate conference website.
-- Margot Roosevelt
Image: Robert Neubecker / for the Los Angeles Times
 Lead wheel weights, which are used to balance vehicle tires, will be phased out in California by the end of 2009 under a court settlement this week with environmentalists, according to an article today by Times staff writer Martin Zimmerman.
In the suit filed in May by the Center for Environmental Health against Chrysler and three lead wheel weight makers, the group said the car parts threatened drinking water. Environmentalists said wheel weights falling off vehicles release 500,000 pounds of lead into the environment. The wheel weights are "ground down by passing vehicles and the lead can find its way into drinking water supplies" and landfills where they can leach into groundwater, the article says.
Zimmerman says some observers see the settlement as a first step toward a broader ban on the wheel weights. Lead is a highly toxic metal that can cause brain damage and other nervous-system disorders, especially in young children. It has been used to make wheel weights for decades because it is cheap and heavy, allowing mechanics to use relatively small weights when balancing tires. (Unbalanced tires can wear unevenly and pose a safety hazard.)
The lead wheel weights were banned in the European Union in 2005 and are being phased out in Japan and South Korea, according to the article. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is sponsoring a voluntary initiative to reduce the use of lead wheel weights but has not banned them, the article says.
-- Tami Abdollah
California is about to adopt the nation's first legislation to control planet-warming gases by curbing sprawl. The bill, SB 375, sponsored by incoming state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), is expected to go before the Assembly as early as Thursday, to the Senate on Friday and then on to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for his signature.
The controversial legislation had been blocked last year by the building industry and by organizations representing cities and counties. Developers feared their suburban projects would be delayed or halted. Local officials were wary of ceding zoning powers and transportation planning to the state.
But California's landmark global warming law, passed in 2006, requires the state's greenhouse gas emissions to be slashed to 1990 levels by 2020, amounting to a 30% cut over expected levels. To accomplish that, state officials say, fuel-efficient cars and factories won't be enough. Subdivisions, commercial centers and highways must be planned so that Californians can live and work closer together, reducing the amount they drive. "Our communities must change the way they grow," Steinberg said.
A compromise version of the 17,000-word bill was hammered out this month and endorsed by builders, environmentalists and local officials. It will require the state's 17 metropolitan planning organizations and its regional transportation plans to meet concrete targets to reduce their global-warming emissions. The targets will be enforced by the state Air Resources Board.
Scientists agree that the earth is heating up at a dangerous pace, in part because of carbon dioxide and other gases from gasoline engines, power plants and other man-made sources. Global warming has already begun melting glaciers and polar ice, which could raise sea levels along coasts in California and elsewhere. Water supplies could become scarcer and many species of plants and animals could become endangered in the state, according to researchers.
Ann Notthoff, a California lobbyist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the Steinberg bill "historic," adding: "It will slow the insidious growth in miles driven by California drivers, which threatens to overwhelm other efforts to reduce heat-trapping pollution. It will result in better-designed communities with less spread out development. And consumers will save money during this era of rising gas prices."
-- Margot Roosevelt
Photo: Traffic on Interstate 5 outside Los Angeles. Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times
Environmental secretaries from all 10 U.S.-Mexico border states met today for the Border Governors Conference in Hollywood. They signed the Tire Initiative Letter of Understanding, which includes "tire pile prevention measures" and tries to eliminate the public health risks.
Often disease-carrying pests such as rodents inhabit these tire
piles. After a rainfall, mosquitoes may breed in the stagnant water
collected inside tires and carry deadly diseases such as encephalitis,
West Nile virus, dengue fever and malaria.
Scrap-tire fires are difficult to extinguish and can burn for weeks
or months releasing thick black smoke that can contaminate the soil
with oily residue, generate significant liquid waste and contaminate
ground and surface water.
So far 4 million scrap tires have been removed from the U.S.-Mexico border to decrease the risk of fires and disease that they pose to border residents, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Tire Initiative is a joint partnership by the EPA and the Mexican Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. Representatives at the conference were from California, Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
State and local governments on both sides of the border as well as private industry such as the U.S. Rubber Manufactures Assn., have joined in implementing Tire Initiative's measures, according to the EPA.
Last month, the California Integrated Waste Management Board awarded $325,000 to El Cerrito in Contra Costa County and Baldwin Park to divert 21,000 waste tires from California landfills and use them to create rubberized asphalt concrete.
The EPA's Border 2012 U.S.-Mexico Environmental Program works to protect the environment and public health for 10 states on both sides of the 2,000-mile border.
-- Tami Abdollah
Photo: Dump truck and tractor tires. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times
Check out Times staff writer Richard Simon's story today on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's softening stance on offshore drilling.
According to the story, Pelosi and other House colleagues are considering legislation that would allow new offshore drilling as part of a broad energy bill out of worries that Democrats aren't doing enough to address high gas prices during an election year. The issue has presented Pelosi with a sticky political problem. On one hand, with gas prices on voters' minds, public support for offshore drilling has increased, even in California, where a 1969 oil spill devastated the coast off Santa Barbara. Republicans have spotlighted Pelosi's opposition to new coastal drilling in attacks on Democrats throughout the country.
But the drilling ban has long been a priority for environmentalists, an important Democratic constituency, and party leaders prefer to shield their members from politically tough votes close to an election.
Last month President George W. Bush lifted an 18-year-old ban on new oil and gas drilling along U.S. coastlines and called on Congress to do the same because of high gas prices.
Meanwhile in California and across the country this week, crude oil prices continued to slide downward bringing motorists slight relief at the pumps.
-- Tami Abdollah
Photo: Offshore oil rigs near the Rincon Beach area in Ventura County. Public support for new offshore drilling has increased, even in California. Credit: Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times
A coalition of environmental, fishing and community organizations spoke out against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sen. Diane Feinstein's push for a $9.3-million water bond in November, arguing it would worsen California's water crisis while increasing its debt.
Earlier this summer, Schwarzenegger declared California was in a drought and facing a severe water "crisis." He and Feinstein have pushed for the passage of the Safe, Clean, Reliable Drinking Water Supply Act of 2008*, a bond that aims to ensure a reliable annual water supply by increasing storage, improve the process through which water is conveyed throughout the state and increase conservation and efficiency.
The coalition argues that officials should create "new management solutions" rather than fund the "same kinds of projects that have pushed California's water system to the brink." It suggests enforcing land use regulations based on true water availability, creating a statewide conservation program, protecting watershed and aquatic ecosystems and creating water policy that focuses on sustainability and equity.
Coalition groups include Environment Now, Planning and Conservation League, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Clean Water Action, and the Community Water Center.
--Tami Abdollah
*Was previously written as "Safe Drinking Water Act" as referred to by a member of the coalition.
Photo: Water flows in an irrigation canal in a cornfield on Andrus Island near Isleton, California, July 16, 2008 in the Delta region of Central California. The Delta region is the heart of the California water system where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers converge before flowing to San Francisco Bay. Credit: Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times
California's Senate today approved the Ports Investment Bill (SB 974), which would tack on a $30 fee per shipping container processed through the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland.
The measure, which will go before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is expected to generate more than $300 million a year to improve the freight rail system and fund projects to reduce air pollution from port operations and freight transport.
Research by the California Air Resources Board released in May concluded that 3,700 Californians die prematurely each year from the movement of goods. The shipment of cargo containers -- which rely on diesel-fueled ships, trucks and trains -- is expected to triple in the next couple of decades, according to the Coalition for Clean Air.
Last week the Public Policy Institute of California released a statewide survey that showed 61% of Californians support such a fee.
-- Tami Abdollah
Photo: Shipping containers fill a section of the Port of Los Angeles. State Sen. Alan Lowenthal's bill is a reworking of earlier versions that he says addresses concerns of business, environmentalists, the governor and L.A.'s mayor. Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times
The region's bustling ports have become a favored backdrop for environmental announcements, and that's not lost on California Atty. Gen. Edmund G. Brown Jr., who stood before the gantry cranes and containers Thursday and threw jabs at the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Brown officially started the clock ticking toward the filing of a suit against the agency for not regulating greenhouse gases emitted by ships, trucks and other equipment at the port: "Ships, aircraft and industrial equipment burn huge quantities of fossil fuel and cause massive greenhouse gas pollution. ... Because Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency continues to wantonly disregard its duty to regulate pollution, California is forced to seek judicial action.”
The EPA has put off action to regulate greenhouse gases, and last month announced it was soliciting comments on ways to approach the issue.
It's been a bad week for the agency, and some might say a bad seven months or so, since it rejected California's attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has publicly accused EPA Director Stephen Johnson of deceiving and obfuscating on global warming issues and other matters, and joined with three other senators this week to demand his resignation.
-- Geoffrey Mohan
Photo: Richard Hartog/Los Angeles Times
Those tires on your wheels may end up on your roads, thanks to a more than $325,000 effort to divert 21,000 waste tires from California landfills and use them to create rubberized asphalt concrete, according to the California Integrated Waste Management Board.
The waste board awarded the money last week to El Cerrito up north in Contra Costa County and Baldwin Park.
Rubberized asphalt concrete is made by blending rubber from recycled waste tires with asphalt and uses about 2,000 waste tires for ever lane mile paved. Not only does it cut down in noise, but it resists cracking, retains its original color and can save up to $50,000 per lane mile compared with the standard 4-inch thick layer of regular asphalt.
So far the waste board has provided more than $25 million in such grants to find new uses for the roughly 42 million waste tires generated each year in California. About 75% are recycled, but roughly 10 million tires remain and are often found in landfills or illegal stockpiles. These surplus tires can be breeding grounds for mosquitoes, rodents and other pests, according to the board. They also can pose a high fire risk, and these fires are not only hard to put out but they also create heavy smoke and toxic runoff.
Money for these grants come from the $1.75 recycling fee charged on each new tire sold in California. The waste board receives $1 for each tire, and the rest of the money is used for tire-related air emission programs.
-- Tami Abdollah
Photo: Michael Conroy / Associated Press
The Natural Resources Defense Council released its second annual "Fighting Oil Addiction" report today in which they ranked states by their "oil vulnerability" -- those most affected by spikes in oil prices -- and listed the states that are doing the most to "wean themselves from oil."
California topped the list of states trying to reduce their oil dependency, according to the report. It was followed by New York, Connecticut, Washington, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Colorado and Maryland.
The states in which drivers were most vulnerable to increased gas prices were led by Mississippi, followed by South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky, New Mexico, Indiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Iowa. "Our oil vulnerability ranking is based on the average percentage of income that states’ drivers spend on gasoline. Generally, the most vulnerable states are in the South and the least vulnerable are in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. And the differences are significant. Average drivers in the most vulnerable state, Mississippi, spend almost 8 percent of their income on gasoline, while average drivers in the least vulnerable state, Connecticut, spend about 3 percent of theirs. As oil prices go up, drivers in the vulnerable states are feeling the pinch more."
According to the report, California drivers on average spent 5.38% (or $2,234.33), of their annual income on gasoline. Mississippi drivers, on the other hand, spent 7.87% (2,268.82) on gas in 2007.
The study also listed the states doing the least to reduce oil dependency. That list was led by Alaska, followed by Mississippi, Alabama, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, West Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri and Delaware.
California was singled out in the report for leading the nation in its strict emissions standards as part of "clean cars" standards as well as its low-carbon fuel standard. The study said such programs in addition to "smart growth," such as improved land use policies to reduce urban sprawl and investment in public transit, were successful state policies to that have led to reduced oil dependence.
The report urges federal policies that "complement and support" state actions.
--Tami Abdollah
Check out Times staff writer Eric Bailey's story today on another late-Friday decision by a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger of Fresno said in a 118-page opinion that the "Central Valley's winter- and spring-run salmon, as well as the remnants of its once-thriving steelhead population, are being threatened by the dams and aqueducts that store and move water around California," according to the story. But the judge denied several remedies suggested by environmental attorneys ... such as storing more water behind Shasta Dam to be released for migrating salmon and opening a pivotal diversion dam's gates to allow the fish to reach spawning grounds.
Environmentalists sued last April over threats to salmon and steelhead. According to the story, federal officials are working on a biological study "spelling out operational changes needed to keep the state's water system functioning without endangering the fish."
During a series of hearings this summer, state and federal water agencies "voluntarily agreed to some operational changes to better protect the fish, such as earlier opening of a diversion dam and increased water flows down a key tributary," the story says. "But environmentalists and fishermen wanted more." The judge said a "scientific and evidentiary dispute" undercut the merits of environmentalists' proposed changes. He set a hearing Wednesday to hear further arguments.
Wanger's latest decision comes nearly a year after he ordered a pivotal shift in water operations because of concerns about Delta smelt, a tiny endangered fish that lives only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. That ruling has resulted in a 30% cutback in Delta water exports this year.
On Thursday, the Public Policy Institute of California released a report concluding that a peripheral canal to carry water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta was the best potential strategy for reviving a threatened ecosystem and maintaining quality water for Californians.
-- Tami Abdollah
Photo: The 2002 Klamath salmon die-off, which officials said was the worst in decades, claimed more than 30,000 fish. Klamath, Calif. Credit: Bruce Ely, AP Photo / The Oregonian
Check out today's story by Times staff writer Nancy Vogel on legislators' approval of a $60 fee on every container passing through the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland. According to her story, the measure would generate about $400 million a year and be used to "ease the traffic congestion and air pollution generated by the ports, which handle more than 40% of the nation's goods." Similar bills were vetoed or failed in the last two years, but this measure's author, Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), said he was optimistic that his legislation would be signed into law.
...The money would be used across Southern California and in the Bay Area for such projects as installing cleaner-burning truck and train engines and building roadways under or over railroad tracks to avoid long lines of idling vehicles.
-- Tami Abdollah
Photo: Shipping containers fill a section of the Port of Los Angeles. State Sen. Alan Lowenthal's bill is a reworking of earlier versions that he says addresses concerns of business, environmentalists, the governor and L.A.'s mayor. Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times
Last year, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed three bills that would have set stringent state standards for green buildings, his rationale dovetailed with that of the powerful California Building Industry Assn. Rather than set rules by legislation, the governor argued, a new State Green Building Code, under development by the California Building Standards Commission, would deal with the issue.
On Thursday, the commission is slated to meet in Sacramento to adopt the new code. But far from setting tough rules to save energy, water and use promote eco-friendly materials, the proposed code would actually undermine green building standards set by 75 California cities and counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to green building advocates.
No surprise there, since the commission's advisory committee is chaired by Robert Raymer, technical director of the California Building Industry Assn.
According to draft testimony prepared by John Walser of the Northern California chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, a national non-profit industry group, the proposed state code "would represent a lower environmental threshold than the basic levels of qualification for the most commonly used green building rating systems, including the one the state adopted for its own buildings: the LEED rating system." (LEED, a national benchmark for green buildings, stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).
If the proposed state rules are adopted, he asserts, "local governments may face legal challenges when attempting to adopt a more stringent code." Among its other deficiencies, he notes, the new code fails to include adequate standards on recycling, renewable energy and the use of wood (allowing dubious industry-certified wood instead of mandating wood vetted as sustainably harvested by the national Forest Stewardship Council).
A July 14 memo prepared by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national group with 250,000 California members, calls the draft "severely flawed ... potentially preempting already adopted local green building standards." The new code "would serve a disheartening blow to these communities which sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions..." it charges.
A spokesman for the building industry association, John Frith, said the advisory committees "do not write code. That is the job of the various state agencies." And Raymer added that the state code serves as a "minimum threshold" and would not interfere with local standards.
But environmentalists are mobilizing this week to persuade the Governor's staff that it would embarrass him to adopt a weak new code only weeks after the state issued a draft plan to cut back its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% in the next 12 years. Schwarzenegger touts the battle against global warming as one of his signature issues.
Residential and commercial structures that waste energy through heating, air conditioning, and poor choice of materials, are major emitters of planet-heating gases. Overall, buildings represent 39% of US primary energy use and account for 40 % of carbon dioxide emissions nationwide.
--Margot Roosevelt
Responding to a U.S. Supreme Court order, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson said today that the Clean Air Act was "the wrong tool for addressing greenhouse gases" because it would be too costly to the American public, and said that Congress should move forward with passing legislation to tackle the issue instead.
The high court had ordered the EPA more than a year ago to determine if greenhouse gases were a danger to the public. If so, the justices said, under the Clean Air Act, the agency was required to develop regulations to reduce the risk.
Instead, Johnson signed what he said was an unprecedented 1,000-page document this morning that included letters from numerous White House environmental and economic agencies detailing how such regulations could harm major sectors of the economy.
"One point is clear," Johnson said. "The potential regulation of greenhouse gases under any portion of the Clean Air Act could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land."
He said he would accept comments on the proposed EPA regulations in response to the court order, but stressed repeatedly that it was the wrong approach because of the costs.
The document also includes a sharply revised version of a May draft by EPA staff members in which they concluded as much as $2 trillion in savings to consumers at the gas pump and elsewhere could be achieved if greenhouse gas regulations were implemented. That number was slashed to $830 billion, and the price of gas was calculated at $2 a gallon for the next 30 years. EPA press secretary Jonathan Schradar said he did not know why the numbers had been changed, but said extensive review of the earlier draft had been performed by agency staff members.
Today's announcement once again effectively eliminates any likelihood of the Bush administration regulating greenhouse gases.
-- Janet Wilson
Tugboats and cargo ships alike are pumping out far more soot than previously thought, according to new findings released today by federal and private scientists.
Stubby tugboats plying busy harbors puff out more sooty black carbon than any other commercial vessels, and large cargo ships emit more than twice as much soot as previously estimated, according to the first broad study of commercial vessel emissions, say researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado. The findings are laid out in the July 11 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "Commercial shipping emissions have been one of the least studied areas of all combustion emissions," said lead author Daniel Lack, of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory. "The two previous studies of soot emissions examined a total of three ships. We reviewed plumes from 96 different vessels."
Lack and his colleagues observed and measured black carbon plumes emitted by tankers, cargo and container ships, large fishing boats, tug boats and ferries in open ocean waters, channels and ports along the southeast United States and Texas during the summer of 2006.
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's busiest, along with nearby Santa Barbara Channel, are regularly used by hundreds of polluting vessels, and local and state air regulators say marine vessel emissions are a major piece of Southern California's continuing air pollution woes.
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