The relief would be a short-term variance that would allow greater production during the current energy emergency. In recent months, air-quality agencies in California have worked with power generators several times to ensure plants can operate at full capacity. Last month, for example, the AQMD agreed to let AES Corp. keep three plants in Los Angeles and Orange counties running despite severe pollution violations. A similar deal was worked out in August with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and also between Ventura County's air-quality agency and a Reliant Energy plant in Oxnard. To my knowledge, it has not been an issue.
Power plants emit large volumes of nitrogen oxides, a key ingredient of smog and particle pollution.
But as the new pollution controls are installed during the next couple of years, emissions will decline. Even if pollution regulations were cutting power supply, California would not be able to roll back any of its smog rules without approval from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Under the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, signed by Bush's father when he was president, the state must adhere to a plan that reduces smog to healthful levels by 2010. Air-quality regulators say power generators in the Los Angeles Basin have known for seven years that they must reduce their emissions. Yet the companies delayed installing the costly catalytic equipment that would keep them under their emissions limits.