• Jane W. Carney of Riverside Appointed to AQMD Board
• Board Strengthens Toxic Pollution Rule
• Toxics Plan, Final Toxics Study Presented to Board
• Hearings Set on Rules for Car Fleets, Gas Pumps
• Clean Fuels Plan Outlined, Accomplishments Detailed

In Other News:

• BACT Guidelines Updated
• 1998 RECLAIM Audit Report Approved
• Report to Legislature Received
• AQMD Joins California Fuel Cell Partnership
• Town Hall Meeting/Clean Air Fair Set in Huntington Park

Riverside civic leader Jane W. Carney has been appointed to the AQMD Governing Board by the Senate Rules Committee. She replaces Mee Hae Lee, who has served on the Board as the committee’s appointee since 1993.

Carney, who has over 24 years of experience in corporate and business law, is a partner of the Riverside law firm of Carney & Delany, LLP. She is a graduate of the School of Law at University of California, Davis, where she was elected to Order of the Coif.

Carney has lived in Riverside since 1977, where she has been active in a wide variety of community activities. She now serves as Vice President of the Citizens University Committee and is the immediate past President of the Monday Morning Group of Western Riverside County. Carney served as a trustee of Riverside Community College from August 1993 to December 1995. She also chaired Mayor Ron Loveridge’s Action Task Force for Good Jobs and co-chaired the fundraising campaign for United Way of the Inland Valleys from 1993 to 1994. She was actively involved in the successful effort to locate a federal district court in the Riverside-San Bernardino area. Carney is a past President of the Riverside Downtown Association and of the Riverside County Bar Association. She has been a member of the Sierra Club for more than 20 years.

Carney has received numerous awards, including Citizen of the Year from the Greater Riverside Chamber of Commerce, Woman of Achievement Award from the Black Voice News and Woman of the Year Award from the California Senate, Senator Robert Presley.

She is married to Francis M. Carney, a long-time faculty member of the University of California, Riverside, and is the mother of three adult children.

AQMD’s Governing Board today approved amendments to strengthen Rule 1402 – Control of Air Toxic Contaminants from Existing Sources.

The amended rule will better protect public health by:

• Reducing the maximum allowable cancer risk from an existing facility from 100 in one million to 25 in one million;
• Reducing the allowable non-cancer risk measured by a hazard index from 5.0 to 3.0;
• Cutting the time allowed to reduce toxic emissions from five to three years unless a facility qualifies for extensions based on technical or economic factors;
• Adding a new requirement for a maximum cancer burden of 0.5. The cancer burden represents the expected number of cancer cases that will result from the facility during a 70-year period.
• Establishing a process to reduce toxic emissions from eight specific industries; and
• Enhancing public notification and toxic emissions inventory requirements.

The new requirements take effect upon adoption.

Facilities below the 100 in one million risk level may request renewable, two-year extensions to achieve the 25 in one million level if:

• No technology is commercially available to reduce their toxic emissions; or
• The cost to reduce toxic emissions exceeds $4 million per cancer case avoided, and $18,000 per ton if the toxic also is a criteria pollutant.

The first extension could be granted by AQMD’s executive officer, but subsequent extensions would have to be approved by the Board.

In addition to amending Rule 1402, AQMD plans to adopt specific technology-based rules within the next three years to reduce toxic emissions from up to 7,500 facilities. The industry categories and schedule for adopting rules affecting them are:

• Gas Stations
• Biomedical Sterilization
• Motion Picture Film Processing

• Aerospace Industry
• Dry Cleaning
• Metal Finishing

• Rubber Product Manufacturing
• Wood furniture stripping

If rules to regulate these industries are not adopted within three years, the proposed amendments to Rule 1402 would allow AQMD to request toxic inventories from facilities and possibly cover them under the rule’s risk-based reduction requirements.

The proposal also would require:

• More frequent progress reports and annual public notifications for facilities;
• Annual public meetings for facilities exceeding a risk of 100 in 1 million or a hazard index of 5.0; and
• Toxic emissions inventories for facilities that use specific cancer-causing chemicals but are not currently in the AB2588 Toxic Hot Spots Program.

AQMD’s staff presented an Air Toxics Control Plan to the Governing Board, along with the final report on the Multiple Air Toxics Exposure Study-II.

The plan provides a comprehensive discussion of strategies to reduce air toxic exposures in the region over the next 10 years.

While the general conclusions of MATES-II have not changed, the final report incorporates suggestions from the public presented both in writing and at public meetings. The report also includes a section that summarizes the comments received on the draft report with AQMD responses. The Board received and filed the report by staff and requested a follow-up written response to several issues raised at today’s meeting.

The Governing Board set a public hearing for Proposed Rule 1191 – Light- and Medium-Duty Public Fleet Vehicles on June 16. Amendments to Rule 461 – Gasoline Transfer and Dispensing and Regulation -- are scheduled for April 21, as noted during the Board meeting.

Proposed Rule 1191 is the first of eight measures that AQMD is developing to gradually shift public agencies in the region to low emissions and clean-fueled vehicles. It would require public agencies with fleets of 15 or more vehicles to purchase low emissions vehicles, or cleaner fuels, whenever buying new light- or medium-duty passenger cars, vans, sport utility vehicles or trucks. These low emissions vehicles are available in a wide variety of makes and models.

Proposed amendments to Rule 461 would set tighter standards for the installation and maintenance of gasoline vapor recovery equipment at service stations in the area to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds – many of which are toxic air pollutants – by 25 tons a day. The amendments also would be one of the first measures adopted to reduce toxic pollution outlined in AQMD’s Air Toxics Control Plan, as well as ozone-forming pollutants.

For further information on either measure, contact Jack Broadbent at (909) 396-3789.

 AQMD has mapped out a $14 million program to help develop key clean air technologies this year including fuel cells, electric, hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles. The program was approved by AQMD’s Governing Board today. The Board also received the Technology Advancement Office’s  1998-99 annual report.

The Technology Advancement Plan for the Clean Fuels Program defines five major priorities:

• Assisting the development of zero-emission fuel cells for transportation;
• Developing and demonstrating clean-fueled alternatives to heavy-duty diesel trucks;
• Assisting the development of electric and hybrid-electric technologies, including demonstration of advanced energy storage devices such as flywheels and ultracapacitors;
• Developing and demonstrating alternative fueled and electric off-road vehicles and equipment; and
• Developing additional paints and solvents with zero smog-forming volatile organic compounds.

AQMD has committed $4 million from the Technology Advancement Office budget to match state money from the Carl Moyer Memorial Air Quality Standards Attainment Program to replace diesel engines with alternative fuel or low-emission equipment. In addition, some of the potential projects and proposed amounts of AQMD co-funding include:

• $2 million for incentives to encourage school districts to purchase clean fuel school buses;
• $1.5 million to demonstrate fuel cells in real-world applications;
• $1 million to develop and demonstrate hydrogen refueling infrastructure technologies to support zero emissions fuel cell vehicles;
• $600,000 for development and demonstration of low-emission alternative fuel technologies for off-road vehicles such as heavy-duty construction equipment;
• $500,000 for demonstration of a home refueling appliance for natural gas vehicles;
• $250,000 for demonstration of zero-emission technology for idling truck tractor-trailers; and
• $250,000 to develop and demonstrate alternatives to dry cleaning with the toxic chemical perchloroethylene.

AQMD’s Clean Fuels Program, founded in 1988, is funded primarily by a $1 registration renewal fee on vehicles registered in the South Coast Air Basin. These funds can be used only to support mobile source-related projects. Emission fee surcharges on the largest facilities in the region support stationary source projects under the Clean Fuels program. For every $1 contributed from AQMD, Technology Advancement Office projects have been matched on average by $4 from outside businesses and organizations.

The Technology Advancement Office’s Annual Report details 57 projects completed by the office between July 1, 1998 and Dec. 31, 1999. AQMD contributed more than $5.2 million and other organizations gave $13.8 million for a total of more than $19 million. Some of the projects include:

• Developing and demonstrating a medium-duty propane engine, certified by the California Air Resources Board to Ultra Low Emission Vehicle standards, for shuttle buses, street sweepers and delivery vehicles;
• Demonstrating a heavy-duty hybrid truck powered by compressed natural gas and electricity;
• Retrofitting a tug boat at the Port of Los Angeles with electronically controlled, low-emission diesel engines to reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions by more than 82 tons per year;
• Developing and demonstrating a zero-emission electric tractor to push wide-body aircraft out from terminals at Los Angeles International Airport; and
• Further developing the Interstate Clean Transportation Corridor, which aims to provide a natural gas fueling network for heavy-duty trucks between Southern and Northern California, Utah and Nevada.

• Updated best available control technology determinations/listings outlined in AQMD’s BACT Guidelines Part B – Clearinghouse for a variety of equipment and processes, including boilers, dryer ovens, heaters, internal combustion engines, industrial mixers and blenders, polyurethane tube manufacturing, and gas turbines;
• Approved the Annual RECLAIM Audit Report for the 1998 Compliance Year;

• Received the Report to the Legislature and California Air Resources Board on AQMD’s Regulatory Activities for Calendar Year 1999; and

• Authorized AQMD Membership in the California Fuel Cell Partnership.

AQMD will hold a town hall meeting and Clean Air Fair in Huntington Park at the Municipal Park Recreation Center at 3401 E. Florence Drive from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 29. The fair will feature free asthma screening, health care information and a town hall meeting with top AQMD executives.

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