Will SLO County’s clear skies survive the Trump administration’s agenda? | Opinion
I grew up in Riverside, about 200 miles southeast of here. In those days, the smog was often so thick that you couldn’t see downtown from my neighborhood, much less the towering 8,000-foot San Bernardino mountains just 20 miles away.
We’d have “smog alerts” when the ozone reached levels much higher than what we tolerate now, and that would go on for days on end. Our eyes would sting, our lungs would burn, team sports were canceled. If you tried to play outside anyway, your lungs would end up hurting so badly you’d have to go indoors and try not to take deep breaths.
We shared that same smog with Los Angeles. There, a resident complained about “the terrible pollution of the air which is blotting out the very sun, and making more than four out of five days a sort of mild hell.”
All that smog came from unrestricted industrial smoke, automobile exhaust and people burning trash in their backyards. Despite how bad it was, industry and oil companies fought to continue polluting and residents wanted to keep burning trash in their backyards. Solving this problem required the efforts of multiple government agencies, culminating with the formation 0f a regional Air Quality Management District. The burning of trash in backyard incinerators was prohibited, replaced with a system to collect it. Multiple industrial and automotive sources of pollution were addressed and eliminated.
On the federal level, we regulated smog production with the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 and the Clean Air Act of 1963. After three decades of effort, we dropped smog carbon monoxide levels from 35 ppm in 1979 to below the national standard level of 9 ppm, even as the region added 3 million new residents.
Those rules and regulations may sometimes seem onerous, but we need only look back to how it was before in order to appreciate them. They haven’t impeded California from becoming the world’s fifth largest economy, either.
The historical message is that clear, nontoxic air is not a given. Individual interests will always conclude that their own contribution to the problem is minor and should be allowed, but this results in opaque clouds of toxic smoke that burns our eyes, such as we had in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Clear skies require a purposeful and collective effort, i.e., government regulation.
On March 28, The Tribune published an article detailing how the Trump administration is gutting the Environmental Protection Agency and will allow exemptions for companies to emit poisons such as mercury and arsenic into our environment.
Although the Trump administration cannot legally override existing California clean air standards, it can threaten to damage the state by withholding federal funds for other needs. Even though the Clean Air Act allows California to set its own air pollution standards, these are dependent on getting a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency.
California has already had to withdraw four clean-air initiatives because of the likelihood that the Trump administration would oppose them. Furthermore, The Tribune reported on April 17 that the Trump administration has stopped the construction of an offshore wind project off New York that has been permitted and already broken ground. The Constitution, by itself, is not restraining this administration’s coal- and oil-fueled ambitions.
Could we lose our clear skies here?
San Luis Obispo County now has a population nearing 300,000 people, with nearly a million more in our neighboring counties. The total vehicle miles traveled within and through San Luis Obispo County numbers in the billions per year. We have hundreds of thousands of residents who could go back to burning trash in their backyards. Local industry would be set free to discharge their waste into our air and waterways. We would be left with no defense against those who value their own profit and convenience more than the air we breathe.
Despite 50 years of effort, the days of stinging, watery eyes, burning lungs and opaque air could be brought back and inflicted upon San Luis Obispo County.
It is incumbent upon us to preserve the beauty and healthiness of our region. We have seen how successful legislation can curtail pollution while allowing our economy to thrive. Let’s stand together and demand that our legislators continue to provide us clear skies and a healthy environment. We did it before. Let’s do it again.
Dr. George Hansen lives in Arroyo Grande.