A coalition of environmental groups plans to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today to force it to overturn motor vehicle emissions limits for Southern California, charging that the targets fail to address hazardous pollution faced by 1.5 million people who live next to freeways.
In a petition to be filed in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the Natural Resources Defense Council is demanding comprehensive monitoring of air quality along freeways, including the 710 Freeway, where traffic flow averages 12,180 vehicles per hour -- more than 25% of them diesel trucks.
Of particular concern to the coalition are measurements taken by South Coast Air Quality Management District monitors that are far from heavily traveled roadways where cancer risks from diesel particulates are greatest.
Federal policy prohibits local air regulators, including the AQMD, from using measurements near a known large pollution source, in this case a truck-clogged freeway that serves the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, to calculate regional air pollution amounts.
Regional air and transportation officials said they sympathized with the environmental groups but were worried such a lawsuit could cost Southern California billions in federal transportation funds, including money earmarked for expansion of the 710 Freeway to speed up idling diesel trucks.
"They're potentially opening up a Pandora's box that may jeopardize regional transportation funding" by delaying the process, said Barry Wallerstein, executive officer of the AQMD.
Air districts in the Coachella Valley, Atlanta and elsewhere have lost such funds for not setting vehicle emission levels in time, he said.
Wallerstein added that the local district would begin monitoring diesel particulate pollution on freeways this summer.
The EPA also rejected tougher motor vehicle emissions limits proposed by the local district and the state air board, Wallerstein said. He said suing to overturn the renegotiated levels could allow EPA to weaken them even further.
"The Bush administration has already tried to weaken these once," he said.
The measurements, known as "motor vehicle emissions budgets," were recently approved by the EPA for use in developing a sweeping regional clean air plan to meet federal air quality standards and acquire critical transportation project funding.
