California Air Resources Board

It has been a decade in the making, but when President Bush signs the new federal Clean Air Act later this month, many in the nation's smoggiest cities will agree it was worth the wait. Cars will be cleaner. Factories will be less polluting. Cancer-causing air contaminants will be reduced. By the year 2010, every smog-bound metropolitan area in the country is supposed to be in compliance with federal clean air standards, including Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Who knew that being a smoggy place might be good for business? Gov. Jerry Brown is in China, and one of the things he's pitching is California's expertise in dealing with smog. Because if there's one thing we have in common with the Chinese, it's air pollution. Now, some of what Brown is doing is, well, kind of squishy. As my colleague Anthony York reported : On Wednesday, he held a private meeting with Environmental Protection Minister Zhou Shengxian. They signed a nonbinding agreement "to enhance cooperation on reducing air pollution," the first such accord between China's government and a U.S. state and one of several Brown is scheduled to secure while here.

Three months after his initial choice of an industry lobbyist was condemned by environmentalists and rejected by Democratic legislators, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday appointed a respected air-quality scientist to chair the California Air Resources Board. The Republican governor's choice of Democrat Robert F.

I was disturbed by sections of a recent article and cartoon ("State Taking Wrong Road in Drive for Electric Vehicles," June 12), which inaccurately said that air emissions from power plants will negate the benefits of the commercial introduction of zero-emission electric vehicles. In California, electric vehicles are 97% less polluting than conventional gasoline-powered cars, even accounting for air emissions from power plants that generate the electricity to recharge the batteries.

General Motors wants to be viewed as supporting futuristic developments in propulsion systems and is constantly touting one research and development effort after another ("Peter Buys an Electric Car," by Peter Horton, June 8). But it does not want to be the guinea pig in actually producing radically new vehicles in quantities sufficient to break the chicken-versus-egg cycle. Unfortunately for GM, its EV1 design team came up with something immediately practical and desirable, and the limited production runs mandated by the California Air Resources Board put these prized vehicles into the hands of a significant number of avid consumers.

The California Air Resources Board today will propose several new measures designed to cut the state's global warming emissions within the next 2 1/2 years. The proposals include retrofitting trucks, reducing pollution in computer manufacturing and requiring car owners to keep their tires properly inflated. Altogether, they would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2.8 million metric tons a year, an early dent in the 174 million metric tons that must be slashed by the year 2020.

The California Air Resources Board voted unanimously Thursday to declare secondhand smoke a toxic air contaminant, opening the door to possible additional regulation of cigarette smokers in coming years. Banning smoking in cars with passengers, particularly children, was recommended by the lone speaker at the hearing, Paul Knepprath of the American Lung Assn. He also called for smoking bans in hotels, motels and apartment buildings.

The state Senate on Thursday confirmed the appointment of Orange County Supervisor Jim Silva to the California Air Resources Board, despite criticism that he is antienvironment. Silva won the Senate's blessing on a 26-4 vote after Senate Leader Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) blasted the supervisor as someone who puts the interests of business ahead of health and environmental concerns.

A disservice will be done to the public if the 2O-year air quality improvement plan proposed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District is approved by the California Air Resources Board at its hearing on Aug. 15. No one disagrees with the goal to clean our air, including our members in business, labor and government who live and work in Southern California along with their families and friends. But the AQMD plan will prove too controversial to work over the long haul. It is an unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky scheme which is technologically, economically, socially and politically impossible to achieve, despite its best theoretical intentions.

A coalition of environmental groups filed suit Thursday against the California Air Resources Board, charging that the agency approved an illegal plan that fails to take strong measures to clean up the air in the Los Angeles Basin.