Bill Seeks to Shake Up Valley Air Board
Aug. 14–SACRAMENTO — A key decision about the San Joaquin Valley’s polluted air will be awaiting lawmakers when they return from their summer recess Monday.
A controversial bill pending before them would shake up the valley’s air board by adding members to represent the region’s larger cities and bring expertise on air pollution and its health effects.
The measure puts Kern County’s two Democratic lawmakers — Sen. Dean Florez of Shafter and Assemblywoman Nicole Parra of Hanford — on a political hot seat.
It is being pushed by clean-air advocates who say the current board is too close to farmers, developers and oil producers to impose the tough rules that are needed.
It is bitterly opposed by valley industry groups and by local government officials who control the current board. They say the county supervisors and City Council members on the board are doing a fine job of balancing the need for clean air and economic development.
The 11-member board is now made up of a county supervisor from each of the valley’s eight counties plus three City Council members.
The bill would increase the city members from three to five, giving permanent seats to council members from Bakersfield, Fresno and Stockton.
Its most controversial feature would add two public members — a physician with expertise in the health effects of smog and an air pollution expert. They would be appointed by the California Air Resources Board, which outranks regional boards.
The bill’s author, Democratic Sen. Mike Machado from the Stockton area, says the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District board has failed in its responsibility to protect valley residents from the smog that has been blamed for an epidemic of asthma and other health problems.
“Every major decision the board has made has been the result of litigation and lawsuits that have forced the board’s hand,” Machado said. “This board has been falling far behind the progress in cleaning up the air of any other air board in the state.”
“This is a captive board,” said Kevin Hall, a Fresno area Sierra Club official. “All of the industries regulated by this board like this board.”
The current board and its allies take sharp issue with that view.
“We are taking major steps to clean the air,” said Kern County Supervisor Barbara Patrick, Kern’s representative on the valley board. “We have some of the toughest rules in the nation. We’re leading the way in the regulation of agriculture and in the regulation of dairies.”
To critics who say the board has not made much of an impact on pollution, Patrick said, “The fact of the matter is that we have the perfect meteorology here to manufacture ozone, and so there’s no doubt we have our work cut out for us.”
The measure has one more committee hearing before reaching the Assembly floor, which is considered its biggest hurdle.
The bill is a slam-dunk no vote for the county’s three Republican lawmakers, but it is not so easy for the two Democrats.
Parra won’t take a position now because bills can be changed drastically at this point in the session, spokeswoman Mary Gutierrez said.
Florez abstained when the bill came through the Senate earlier this year, even though he proposed a similar measure three years ago as part of a package of bills that imposed clean-air requirements on agriculture for the first time.
But earlier this year, Florez said he abstained because he was inclined to give the existing air board a chance show it could enforce the requirements in his previous bills.
He has changed his mind, however, he said recently.
“I don’t think they passed that test,” he said.
He cited the board’s apparent decision to second-guess its staff’s estimate of the amount of pollution emitted by dairy cows and its failure to meet deadlines on another law requiring it to impose fees on developers to finance pollution reduction measures.
“If it comes back to Senate, I’ll probably vote for it,” Florez said.
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