Ozone Politics

George Rebane

Yesterday a lot of government scientists, state bureaucrats, and local politicians got together for the Sierra Ozone Summit (SOS) in Grass Valley.  This was a well-prepared and executed event put together by a coalition of elected officials, Save the Air in Nevada County, and the Northern Sierra Air Quality Management District.  Its purpose was to again highlight the ozone pollution problem in northern California and the Sierra foothills.  A notion oft-repeated during the day was that solving the ozone problem should be bipartisan since we all breathe the same air.  Well, it turned out to be a very political and partisan gathering for those who were paying attention.

For the distant reader, Nevada County in the Sierras is the downwind recipient of Sacramento and Bay Areas’ ozone pollution as the prevailing winds blow it and its precursors into the mountains.  By any reasonable measure there is little that folks in Nevada County can do to affect local ozone levels short of convincing people in the Central Valley and Bay Area to stop driving their cars and trucks.  But there are many things we can do in these foothills to support and advance the road to collectivism.

The SOS audience was predominantly left-of-center and sensitive to that possibility as witnessed by the spontaneous applause that it gave to speakers and questioners proposing greater controls imposed by the state and feds.  The biggest hand was given to the proposition that land-use planning and ordnances - the lynchpin of American local governance – be removed from the cities and counties, and made another instrument of state diktat.  The apparent wisdom underpinning this sentiment was that ‘the movement of air knows no boundaries’.

So, as Supervisor Ted Owens implored in his introductory remarks, the objective would be to “develop strategies” and “regionally based solutions”.  This immediately begs the question of why we (in the foothills) as the sparsely populated recipients of pollution would ever want to impose on ourselves the same solutions as would be needed for densely populated pollution generators.  The audience, of course, loved the regional approach.

Various speakers then followed, and we learned a number of interesting things in no particular order -
• The overwhelming contributors to breathable ozone are “mobile sources” – i.e. cars and trucks and some construction equipment.  Stationary sources are a minor component of ozone pollution and not expected to change over next ten years.
• The Bay Area traffic alone contributes 150 million miles per day to mobile sources.  The greater Sacramento area’s contribution is less but in the tens of millions of miles per day.  Nevada County’s contribution is of the order of 1/1000 of that aggregate.
• The current ozone attainment standard of 80 ppb (parts per billion) is reduced to 75 ppb and will be further reduced to 70 ppb for California.  Other than ‘less is better’, no one has an idea of what the benefit of this reduction will be since these levels have not been studied.  Its attainment will, of course, require more stringent regulations and enforcement provisions on how we work and live.
• Even though controlled exposure to ozone levels results in clinically measurable symptoms and aggravates existing conditions, after all these years there is still no evidence showing that ozone causes asthma or any other chronic and debilitating disease.
• The Sonoma Technologies Inc (STI) model that computes and displays the ozone pollution map on the Sacramento Spare the Air site is not considered by STI to be a model even though it is used to compute the dynamics of wide area ozone levels from a population of fixed ozone monitors.  This map showing the high concentration episodes from past years still forms the prime public perception of ozone pollution and is referred to daily by concerned citizens.
• The STI model assumes homogeneous mixing of air in the vertical column so that ozone monitor height is not a factor in how ground ozone levels are represented.  It is not clear how complex foothill terrain is used, if at all, in the construction of the ozone maps displayed by Sacramento Spare the Air.
• Today 30% of Nevada County workers work outside the county and 11% of the county’s jobs are filled by commuters from outside.
• People have long commutes because government has not built enough “affordable housing”.  Facile traffic arteries don’t cause long commutes and population increases in outlying areas, instead, the lack of local jobs do.  Presumably then providing a superfast transportation system that let’s one travel from Grass Valley to Sacramento in fifteen minutes will have no impact on how many people want to move to Nevada County.
• ‘Smart Growth’ is the best land use solution for minimizing transportation and pollution problems.  Foothill counties should be weaned from allowing traditional large parcel developments and building.  Best is to have high density housing near transit lines.
• Today all the state departments seek to be socially responsible in carrying out their charters.  For example, the broad Caltrans charter is to “provide mobility” for the state, yet it is implemented within the broader objectives of “protecting the economy”, “maintaining quality”(?), and promoting “social equity”.  How Caltrans and other departments resolve the conflicts in such competing objectives (technically called a ‘multi-attribute utility’) was not revealed.  The chosen resolution is, of course, highly dependent on the prevailing political ideology.
• The push should be toward “progressive” land use policies that restrict local alternatives so that ‘smart growth’ is the result.
• The notion that all government standards are based either explicitly or implicitly on the subjective selection of quantitative thresholds (e.g. achieve less than 70 ppb of ozone) appears to be generally unknown.  A couple of Ph.D. level state scientists claimed ignorance of this use and characteristic of utility in making public policy.  They maintained that their threshold recommendations were “totally scientific” (i.e. objective).  This level technical innocence and hubris goes a long way to explain the enthusiasm with which regulatory policy continues to grow.
• Ozone pollution should be hitched to the worldwide climate change hysteria (my word) in order to give it more visibility, purview, and support.  And, of course, to really politicize the issue then when it becomes a contributing part of anthropogenic global warming.  (This was another big crowd pleaser.)
• Finally, “cow poop” contributes 10% of the world’s atmospheric volatile organic compounds.  VOCs and nitrogen oxides (NOx) are the prime precursors of ozone – just add a little sunlight and heat.  I’m not sure where we fit that last piece of information into new and progressive public policy, but you can bet that at least a whiff of Bossie’s flatulence will be in there somewhere.

For more on this issue, please see the related SESF report on ozone - 'Foothill Furor – Seeking Basis for Public Policy on Ozone Pollution' - which will be updated to reflect all the changes that have taken place in the interval.
    

Comments

[Russ]

George, thanks for the excellent report which is far more comprehensive than Laura Brown's report of the same meeting in the Union. If it were a day long event it seems we should have gotten more details than a few lame quotes. Again thanks for filling in the blanks and outlining the issues.

Smart growth and transit oriented communities are a myth. Proponents cannot show me more than one that actually works as they propose it should. If transit met peoples needs they would use it. It does not, thus we see empty buses with ghosts riding in the seats. If transit is so important to people lives why do we see our local Gold County Stage going unused, thirty empty seat carrying ghost riders through out the Western County. If the Gold County Stage were to write a mission statement that is reflective of what they do, they would have to indicate that they exist for the purpose of serving their employees, not the citizens of Nevada County even though those citizens are paying over $6 dollars for every empty seat.