The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has notified California regulators that it cannot approve a controversial air pollution cleanup plan adopted last week by three Bay Area agencies.
In a letter to the state Air Resources Board, the EPA said the plan is "inferior both quantitatively and qualitatively to what has been required and submitted elsewhere in the country."
The EPA officially rejected an earlier version of the plan in March. The latest letter comes just days before a Thursday meeting where the state air board will vote on the plan. Ultimately, both the state and the EPA must approve it.
The plan identifies a variety of programs to reduce emissions from vehicles and industrial activities in order to satisfy federal clean air requirements. It was approved last week by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments.
Without an adequate plan, MTC cannot go forward with about 30 highway and transit projects, including extending BART to San Jose and new road construction throughout the Bay Area.
In the letter sent by Jack P. Broadbent, director of the EPA's regional air division, to Michael Kenny, executive officer of the state air board, Broadbent said some of the plan's modeling is faulty in the way it projects reductions in ozone, the major ingredient in smog.
The air district's assessment doesn't convince the EPA that the cuts offered for compounds called "volatile organics" and nitrogen oxides -- precursors of ozone -- would reduce air pollution violations in Livermore, the letter said.
Pollution and weather conditions in Livermore produce the highest ozone levels in the Bay Area.
However, the EPA might approve the plan if it contained more cuts of pollutants, Broadbent said. He also asked the state to update its own ozone- curtailment plan in 2004, and use the results of a continuing Central California ozone study to do so.
Yesterday, the three Bay Area agencies and state officials conferred with EPA officials in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., about the letter. "We're surprised and very concerned," said Teresa Lee, air district spokeswoman.
"We think it's a good plan. We're hopeful we can reach some accord by Thursday. Obviously, we want to pay attention to EPA's concerns, and want to find out exactly what EPA needs," said Jerry Martin, a spokesman for the air board.
The ozone-reduction plan would add controls to tanks and valves at oil refineries; improve formulations of paints, coatings and solvents; bolster the state smog-check program in the Bay Area; and add incentives for commuters to use public transit.
Citizens and environmental groups had testified at a meeting last week that the plan didn't go far enough.
"We hope this will change the state Air Resources Board's mind and send the plan back to the air district for development of a real clean air plan," said Richard Drury, an attorney at Communities for a Better Environment.
Controls on refineries and power plants and new measures to promote mass transit could be put into place that would almost triple pollution cuts in the Bay Area, Drury said. "These measures are already being done in other regions of the state. It's clearly feasible."
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