The Loma Prietan
February 2001
New Year Sees Air Quality Showdowns
by Dale F. Mead
A coalition of environmental and community groups including the Loma Prieta Chapter has entered the new year with legal guns blazing to force long-stalled action to improve air quality in the Bay Area.
That effort was joined in January by San Francisco-based Our Children’s Earth Foundation, with which the chapter has lent its support for a campaign on a second front: to have diesel-powered school buses replaced state-wide by the cleaner alternative fuel-powered buses. This endeavor is a continuation of last year’s Chapter attempt to get the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority to switch to compressed natural gas for its bus fleet.
January 1, 2001 was the "High Noon" deadline set for response by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to a threat by the coalition to sue the federal agency in federal court. January 15 was the deadline for an announced intent to sue the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and two transit operators in state court. The coalition is composed of Bayview Community Advocates, Communities for a Better Environment, the Latino Issues Forum, the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter, the Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, and the Urban Habitat Program.
On January 8, having received no response from the EPA, the coalition made good on its first threat. Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, on behalf of the plaintiffs, filed suit against the EPA in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to force it to make a ruling on an ozone-reduction plan that had already been implemented and failed to achieve the promised result.
EPA environmental protection specialist Celia Bloomfield acknowledged after the filing that "What [the coalition] did was right; we agree with it. We had a mandatory obligation to act by last October and we didn’t."
Bloomfield said the EPA intended to at least partially disapprove the plan implemented by the MTC, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and the Association of Bay Area Governments to reduce ozone in the region. By its October 2000 deadline the plan failed to meet its objectives; but the EPA, responsible for overseeing regional air quality programs, answered the failure with silence.
Once the ruling is made, Bloomfield said, she expected the agency to negotiate with the plaintiffs and regional agencies to set new goals and deadlines. But she also said the transition from the Clinton to the Bush administration in Washington could also hinder the process, since the agency’s proposed ruling had to be cleared at EPA headquarters.
January 15 was the initial target date for filing the MTC lawsuit. A spokesman for Earthjustice L.D.F., which is spearheading that case as well for the coalition, predicted that the second suit eventually would be filed as preliminary discussions among relevant parties have not yet produced a satisfactory resolution.
The MTC and prospective defendants AC Transit (Alameda County) and San Francisco Municipal Railway (MUNI) have the most potential impact on getting people out of cars and trucks (the single greatest source of ozone pollution) and onto mass transit. Therefore, they became the focal points of the strong action.
Irvin Dawid, co-chair of the Chapter’s Transportation Committee, explained the Chapter’s involvement: "The idea is that we have to create incentives to use transit. MTC has to work with local transit agencies to increase ridership. That’s what we’re hoping will happen here. We’re seeing declining ridership here in Santa Clara County; for the first time the VTA (SCC Valley Transit Authority) ridership has fallen."
The issue is founded in the national air quality standards set nearly 30 years ago to protect public health under the aegis of the EPA. A number of air quality standards, among them ozone reduction standards, were set for various regions. Ozone causes acute respiratory problems, aggravates asthma and can reduce lung capacity even in healthy adults within hours of exposure.
The MTC was set up to coordinate attainment of transportation goals to help meet standards for the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1982, it forged potent measures to increase transit use here, which would improve air quality by reducing motor vehicle use: First, increasing mass transit ridership by 15 percent (working with transit operators like AC Transit and MUNI); and second, (this was actually adopted in 1990 not 1982 in response to litigation brought by the Club) offering financial incentives for transit use such as free transfers to BART and reduced off-hour transit prices.
These measures became part of the 1982 State Implementation Plan overseen by MTC, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and the Association of Bay Area Governments. The problem is, they never were implemented, and standards never have been met. In fact, the MTC was given four deadlines to act (1975, 1987, 1996 and November 15, 2000) by the EPA, and has failed to achieve its goals every time. Most significantly, the projected 15 percent transit use increase has turned into a four-percent drop in ridership even though the population has grown by 30 percent.
Instead, the MTC has abandoned the strategy of increasing ridership and instead has endorsed expanded highway systems, reconciling its air quality requirements by projecting improved emissions from highway vehicles. Those projections have proved unrealistically optimistic.
After last October’s failure, area leaders decided they had had enough stalling by the MTC and enough inaction by the EPA. Beginning with the threat of a suit against EPA and promising a concomitant lawsuit against the transit agencies in mid-October, the citizens groups threw down the gauntlet.
"It’s just been failure, after failure, after failure and today, another failure," Kathryn Alcantar of the Latino Issues Forum declared at the time. "Promises to reduce pollution and protect public health have been broken, and the EPA seems to be turning a blind eye."
The Chapter will continue working with Earthjustice and our coalition partners in holding EPA and MTC accountable for their inactions.