Nitrogen Oxide

The South Coast Air Quality Management District board unanimously voted Friday for a stringent regulation to reduce pollution from the manufacture of electricity, one of the largest industrial contributors to the region's smog. The giant Southern California Edison Co., which is responsible for half the region's utility emissions, endorsed the measure, closing years of both public and private debate.

SEATTLE - Adding to the troubles plaguing Shell Alaska and its drilling program in the Arctic, the Environmental Protection Agency announced late Thursday that it had issued air pollution citations to both of the company's Arctic drilling rigs for “multiple permit violations” during the 2012 drilling season. In a brief notice, the federal agency said the company could be subject to fines or other measures as a result of the violations. EPA officials said the problems were discovered during an inspection of the Noble Discoverer drilling rig and because Shell reported that it had exceeded nitrogen oxide emissions limits on both its drilling rigs during operations last summer.

Honda Motor Co.'s new "lean-burn" engine, touted as a significant advance in fuel efficiency, won't be offered for sale in California because it spews out too much nitrogen oxide, company officials now say. In announcing the engine July 30, the Japanese auto maker's U.S. representatives said it met both U.S. clean-air standards and the more stringent California requirements. But company officials acknowledged this week that they were mistaken.

A CalPortland cement plant near the high desert community of Mojave has agreed to pay a fine of $1.4 million and spend $1.3 million on equipment needed to reduce emissions of pollutants that cause asthma and generate smog, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday. The penalties were part of a settlement that capped an investigation by the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice into the CalPortland Co. facility, one of the largest emitters of nitrogen oxide pollution in California.

The concentration of harmful ozone pollution in the lower atmosphere has more than doubled in the last 100 years, and it will likely rise at an even faster rate in the next 30 years, researchers said last week. Researchers from Britain's Harwell Laboratory said recent measurements of ground-level ozone indicate that levels of the gas are, on the average, twice as high as recorded by French researchers in Paris in the late 1800s.

A CalPortland cement plant near the high desert community of Mojave has agreed to pay a fine of $1.4 million and spend $1.3 million on equipment needed to reduce emissions of pollutants that cause asthma and generate smog, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday. The penalties were part of a settlement that capped an investigation by the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice into the CalPortland Co. facility, one of the largest emitters of nitrogen oxide pollution in California.

Southern California Edison Co. and the staff of the South Coast Air Quality Management District said Tuesday that they have reached a compromise that could remove a major obstacle to implementing a far-reaching clean-air plan for the smoggy Los Angeles Basin. Edison and the AQMD staff said they have agreed in principle on a new approach for controlling power plant emissions of nitrogen oxides, one of the two chief ingredients of photochemical smog. The agreement, if approved by the AQMD's governing board, would eliminate Edison as a major industry opponent to the air plan.

North Carolina sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to block air-quality rules intended to cut by almost 30% the state's generation of smog-causing nitrogen oxide. The state challenged the tougher federal requirements, imposed on 22 states from Missouri to Massachusetts, in part by contesting claims that air pollution from North Carolina contributed to smog in the Northeast. Nitrogen oxide is a component of ozone, an essential part of smog during the summer months.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued regulations Friday to reduce emissions from trucks and buses, overcoming opposition from the White House Office of Management and Budget, which wanted more relaxed standards. The regulations, required under the 1970 Clean Air Act and a recent court order, will force new buses and trucks to install pollution-control devices in three stages. Minor improvements are mandated in 1988, followed by progressively stronger adjustments in 1991 and 1994.

As Southern California experiences a resurgence of smog, a growing number of scientists say the government's long-standing strategy for reducing air pollution may be making it worse. The doubts have arisen because ozone, the main ingredient of smog, is becoming more common in Los Angeles and many other large cities on weekends, when big trucks and other heavy polluters are least active.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District improperly permitted an oil refinery to implement a new industrial process without an environmental review even though the project might have caused substantially more air pollution, the California Supreme Court unanimously decided Monday. The state high court faulted the air quality district for determining that the project by ConocoPhillips Co. in Wilmington would not significantly hurt the environment. The court said the air district applied the wrong base rate when calculating the effect of the emissions.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday unveiled proposals to slash diesel soot from freight trains and marine vessels by 90% by 2030, winning guarded praise from environmentalists, but a scathing rebuke from Southern California's top air quality regulator. Under rules announced by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, existing and new train locomotives would have to meet increasingly tougher controls on emissions of nitrogen oxide and fine particulate matter.

As Southern California experiences a resurgence of smog, a growing number of scientists say the government's long-standing strategy for reducing air pollution may be making it worse. The doubts have arisen because ozone, the main ingredient of smog, is becoming more common in Los Angeles and many other large cities on weekends, when big trucks and other heavy polluters are least active.

For the last five weeks, Glendale's Grayson power plant has been belching half a ton of pollutants into the air almost daily, more than twice previous limits. The same is true for many of the other 14 power plants in Southern California, as the haves generate power, sometimes round-the-clock, for the have-nots. The generators, some of them nearly 50 years old and once considered too dirty for regular use, now keep electricity flowing to residents around the state.

Your Jan. 3 editorial, "Blast of Fresh Air," misses the mark. There's no question that the settlement of the lawsuit between the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the environmental plaintiffs was a good result for those of us who live in the South Coast Air Basin. However, it was merely a sideshow. Even though everyone is patting themselves on the back because stationary sources will be forced to reduce emissions further, the fact of the matter is that more than 80% of the nitrogen oxide (a precursor to ozone)

North Carolina sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to block air-quality rules intended to cut by almost 30% the state's generation of smog-causing nitrogen oxide. The state challenged the tougher federal requirements, imposed on 22 states from Missouri to Massachusetts, in part by contesting claims that air pollution from North Carolina contributed to smog in the Northeast. Nitrogen oxide is a component of ozone, an essential part of smog during the summer months.

One phrase in a report on smog last week by a National Academy of Sciences study group certainly got everybody's attention. It said that 20 years of efforts to reduce levels of ozone, which affects human health by stunting lung capacity and hampering the immune system, have failed to reach national goals. It went on to say that one reason was that "past ozone strategies may have been misdirected." No wonder that phrase caught everyone's eye.

Southern California Edison Co.'s turnabout on an air quality rule it spent years trying to kill is one of the more hopeful signs of the times. It says that advocates of cleaner air haven't lost their touch. It also speaks volumes about the wisdom of turning over control of a utility to someone with a strong environmental record who seems not to mind admitting a mistake--in this case John Bryson, Edison's new chairman.

Until last week, it had seemed a classic case of government regulators creating one environmental problem while trying to solve another. In the interests of cleaner air, the South Coast Air Quality Management District passed a rule in 1989 requiring power plants to sharply reduce the nitrogen-oxide pollutants they send skyward by the year 2000.

Exhaust fumes from planes flying overhead have a far greater effect on the Earth's climate than equivalent sources on the ground, according to a new study. Colin Johnson of Britain's Harwell Laboratory has found that the effect on nitrogen oxides from aircraft is 30 times as great as the effect from other sources of equal magnitude on the ground.