Convinced that sprawl begets smog, Central Valley air quality officials are expected today to become the first regulators in the nation to force builders to pay air pollution fees for new development.
Builders would pay less if their new homes, shopping centers and office complexes were designed in ways that limited automobile use -- by locating banks and dry cleaners closer to houses, for example, or linking bicycle trails and walking paths to schools and work centers.
The developers could avoid the fees entirely if their projects were environmentally friendly enough.
The idea is to prod builders to cut down on traffic in an area where huge growth, and the cars that come with it, have combined with factory farming to create some of America's dirtiest air.
The proposal for the San Joaquin Valley, the southern part of the Central Valley, is being closely watched by regulators around the country. It pits the building industry, which loathes the idea and fears that it may spread, against farm groups, the valley's other major industry.
Builders and some advocates for low-cost housing say the fees will raise prices. Agriculture industry leaders fear that if developers are not required to help clean the region's air, farmers will bear the entire, costly burden.
The San Joaquin Valley has the highest asthma rates in California and now rivals the Los Angeles Basin for the nation's worst air quality, according to the health standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Pollution from farms is a major factor in the region's air problems. Regulators have recently targeted farm emissions -- including cow flatulence and wine vapors -- to reduce smog.
But overall, motor vehicle exhaust is the valley's largest source of smog and soot. That pollution is expected to get worse as the region, home to 3.7 million people, doubles in population over the next four decades.
The table-flat, 400-mile-long Central Valley has become a popular real estate destination in the last 20 years as high housing prices in coastal regions have driven thousands inland in search of bigger, cheaper homes.
The result, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, has been a seemingly never-ending expanse of tract homes near formerly agricultural towns such as Tracy, often populated by people who commute two hours every morning to jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area.
