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Plan for air cleanup would cost $7.5 billion

BY SARAH RUBY, Californian staff writer
e-mail: sruby@bakersfield.com | Monday, Oct 2 2006 10:35 PM

Last Updated: Monday, Oct 2 2006 10:39 PM

It will cost $7.5 billion to cut the valley's ozone pollution by 2013, the federal deadline, according to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District.

That's because residents and businesses decide when cleaner cars and trucks join the road, said Seyed Sadredin, the district's top air official.

Regulators have to wait until consumers invest in new technology, which in the case of diesel engines can take 40 years, he said. If the district wants to retire them sooner, it will have to offer billions of dollars in incentives, Sadredin said.

"I think we'll get ... meaningful" amounts of funding from the state and federal governments to fight pollution, Sadredin said, but he said $7.5 billion is unlikely.

The district has alternatives, which are outlined in a 600-page draft plan released Monday by the district. One solution would be to delay compliance, potentially adding another decade to the deadline. If the district had until 2024 to clean the air, it would need $2.1 billion, Sadredin said. Most of that would be spent helping businesses replace dirty diesel engines.

The district also will likely impose new rules for factories and other stationary sources of emissions, and will be holding workshops to find out what the public thinks of its approach.

"The list of measures we're proposing for business is very aggressive," he said. "In fact, we're expecting pushback."

They might get it from environmental groups as well.

"Is (clean air) something we can wait for?" asked Liza Bolaños, coordinator for the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition in Fresno. If the deadline is pushed back until 2024, today's children will "be in high school and graduating before they can breathe clean air."

If the San Joaquin Valley fails to clean up its air, federal regulators would have to impose a de facto moratorium on new businesses, requiring them to remove twice as much pollution as they produce, Sadredin said. If the district were still out of compliance six months later, it would lose out on about $2 billion in highway funding. It happened in Atlanta, Sadredin said.