In 2018, pollution from oil refineries, factories, and other industrial facilities across South California violated clean air standards to such a degree that they racked up $40 million in fees — fees that the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates pollution across five counties (including Los Angeles County), never bothered to collect.
That’s not according to any kind of investigation but directly from AQMD’s own report.
The agency tasked with regulating emissions that cause smog in the part of the country that routinely has the worst smog has agreed to actually do its job as part of a settlement agreement reached this week that stems from a lawsuit filed by a coalition of environmental justice groups last year.
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And as so often the case, it’s Black and brown residents who are most affected by such pollution, which can cause respiratory diseases like asthma as well as a host of other health problems — and have the most to gain from it actually being regulated.
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Under the agreement, AQMD will adopt a new rule by November “that should require major producers of NOx and VOCs [which generate smog] to either have to pay fees or reduce their emissions by 20 percent,” according to Earthjustice, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. The plaintiffs believe that the fees could bring in at least $25 million annually, “and they hope to stay involved to ensure that such funds go to air quality improvement programs in heavily impacted communities to disincentivize uncontrolled pollution.”
In Los Angeles County in particular — which has been ranked #1 for ozone pollution in the American Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report for 24 years running — industrial pollution is clustered in the south and southeast parts of the county. That includes the predominantly Latinx community of Wilmington, which is home to a large oil refinery, and cities like Compton and Long Beach, which have large Black populations.
Such communities have been shown to have higher levels of exposure to tailpipe pollution than white neighborhoods, and smog from semi truck traffic on the 710 freeway — that connects the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach with the rest of Southern California — has given adjacent neighborhoods the moniker Asthma Alley.
Nitrogen dioxide is found at higher levels in 80% of formerly redlined neighborhoods across the country.
None of that smog is covered by this new agreement, however. AQMD doesn’t monitor mobile sources of pollution like transportation or shipping, which are major sources of smog emissions in the LA area, but “fixed” industrial polluters do fall under its purview.
But there is a connection between freeway-adjacent Black and brown communities and fence-line Black and brown communities: the same logic for running freeways through such neighborhoods led to them being the home of large industrial facilities, too. The means of doing so was often through redlining, and the effect of that can still be seen today in the pollution levels found in redlined neighborhoods: according to a 2023 study, the smog-generating emission called nitrogen dioxide is found at higher levels in 80% of formerly redlined neighborhoods across the country.
It remains to be seen if polluters will actually work to reduce their emissions, or if money from the fines will indeed be used to improve air quality in overburdened communities. But the environmental justice groups that brought the case in the first place are making it clear that, despite winning this settlement, they are not done with the issue.
“AQMD agreeing to move forward with the fee rule is a great victory for communities who are suffering from disproportionate impacts of pollution due to a wide range of major industrial sources,” Milton Hernandez-Nimatuj, Southern California Program Director with Communities for a Better Environment, said in a statement. “We expect our air regulators to be proactive and to do their jobs because if regulators fail, communities will defend their right to clean air, water, and soil.”