Regional Clean Air Incentives Market

Signaling a dramatic new direction in the decades-long war on smog, the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Thursday ordered its staff to prepare plans for a revolutionary new trading market in pollution rights. The 8-1 vote Thursday night came after an overflow public hearing that lasted six hours. The lone dissenting vote was cast by Larry Berg, a political science professor at USC who was appointed to the district board by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

More than two dozen major business groups in Southern California have launched a campaign against an ambitious proposal to fight smog by trading pollution credits, contending it will substantially raise the cost of cleaning the air rather than lower it as promised. The barrage of criticism, led by the Gas Co.

Embarking on a revolutionary approach to combat smog, the Southland's air quality board on Friday created the nation's first "smog market," a controversial program that allows industries to buy and sell pollution credits. After three years of fine-tuning and months of acrimonious public debate, a slightly shrunken version of the program called RECLAIM was adopted by the South Coast Air Quality Management District board on an 11-1 vote. The program goes into effect Jan. 1.

An ounce of gold fetches nearly $400, pork bellies sell for half a dollar a pound and a bushel of soybeans goes for $7 on the open market. But how much will a company pay for the right to emit a ton of pollution into the nation's filthiest air? That question--the focus of worldwide curiosity among industrial leaders and pollution regulators--soon will be answered as Southern California's smog market debuts on New Year's Day.

An ounce of gold fetches nearly $400, pork bellies sell for half a dollar a pound and a bushel of soybeans goes for $7 on the open market. But how much will a company pay for the right to emit a ton of pollution into the nation's filthiest air? That question--the focus of worldwide curiosity among industrial leaders and pollution regulators--soon will be answered as Southern California's smog market debuts on New Year's Day.

It was supposed to be a revolutionary way to clean up the environment, a business-friendly strategy to slash industrial emissions without the heavy hand of government. But the Southland's market basket experiment has been a serious disappointment. The Regional Clean Air Incentives Market, or RECLAIM, has fallen well short of expectations.

In a creative expansion of its groundbreaking stock exchange for smog, the Southland's air quality board Friday approved a program allowing investors to clean up small sources, such as household water heaters and furnaces, in exchange for pollution credits that can be sold on the open market.

Throwing the Southland's long-awaited smog exchange program even further off track, the region's air quality agency said Thursday that it will put off a vote on the controversial proposal until September. The pollution credits trading program--called RECLAIM--was supposed to have been fleshed out and approved by the South Coast Air Quality Management District by Thursday.

Eight months after the South Coast Air Quality Management District approved the first emissions trading program to clean up the Southland's notorious urban air pollution, the district finally explained Wednesday how the program will work, laying out a plan of complex regulations and stiff penalties. Ending a long period of mystery for business and the environmental community alike, the board unveiled 14 regulations to implement the controversial trading program, called RECLAIM.