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Up In The Air
New industry group joins effort to clean up Valley's dreadful pollution. (Published Tuesday, November 19, 2002, 3:59 AM)
A new player took the field in the campaign for better air in the Valley last week, but some of the other team members viewed the development with a jaundiced eye.
Clean Air Now, an effort organized by the San Joaquin Valley's biggest industries and funded by $2 million from ChevronTexaco, announced that it would begin working to find what some of its members called "real world" solutions to the Valley's miserable air quality.
But skeptics immediately reacted with warnings that the group was more likely to impede, rather than help, serious efforts to clean the air. Many members of the industry group have worked to gain exemptions from air quality rules for their own operations, or have been seen as obstacles to real progress in cleaning up the air.
Perhaps the skeptics are right. But there is a logical case to be made for real and energetic involvement on the part of industries -- particularly agriculture and oil -- in the process of cleaning the air. Failure to implement useful solutions locally and regionally -- however painful they may be to corporate bottom lines -- is likely to lead to the imposition of rules and sanctions by the federal government that could prove even harsher.
And the Valley's dirty air is costly to industry and business as well as to individuals. Agriculture suffers huge losses because of foul air. Businesses often have difficulty recruiting employees they need to an area that is so well known for its air pollution.
There is also the matter of those serious federal sanctions that could come crashing down on the Valley if efforts to clean the air fall short. Millions of dollars in highway funds could be cut off, and huge fines might be levied against business and other institutions that continue to pollute.
And people involved in these industries also live here. Their families -- their children -- breathe the same filthy air we all breathe. That's the simplest and most direct type of special interest.
In any case, the group can make useful contributions, seeking answers and funding research. If, as the skeptics charge, this is a smoke screen to mask efforts to slow or derail the kinds of aggressive steps we must take, that will be revealed soon enough. In the meantime, take Clean Air Now at its word, and welcome them to the fight.
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