Air board may decide fate of L.A.-area beach fire rings today

The dispute over hundreds of fire rings that blaze nightly on Los Angeles and Orange County beaches has been raging for months, but is expected to come to a head today as the South Coast Air Quality Management District meets to vote on new restrictions.

Regulators at the South Coast board concede that the 765 fire rings in L.A. and Orange counties are responsible for only a trifling amount of fine particulate pollution spewed into Southern California skies each year — and that doesn’t include emissions from wildfires.

But the regulators say widespread pollution isn’t the issue. Of concern are the highly localized particulates that waft into beach communities from a concentration of fires on the sand nearby.

GRAPHIC: Beach fire rings

A public hearing will be held Friday in Diamond Bar before the board votes on new restrictions. Hundreds of beach bonfire boosters are expected to turn out in support of a ritual they consider synonymous with the California lifestyle.

The dispute began earlier this year as Newport Beach proposed removing all 60 of its fire rings near the Balboa Pier and at Corona del Mar State Beach. The state Coastal Commission, which has jurisdiction over coastal land use and access, opposed the move, saying it would limit the public’s right to low-cost oceanfront recreation.

Beach fires have been exempt from air quality regulations for years. That’s why air quality regulators stepped into the dispute. They didn’t want the Coastal Commission using that exemption to suggest that open fire rings pose no health risk.

The district’s first act, before it conducted any air quality tests near fire rings, was to propose a complete ban on fires at all L.A. and Orange County beaches. That provoked an enormous outcry from beachgoers.

The district then conducted monitoring and now estimates that if all 765 rings burn at once, they put out about 2.5% as much pollution as the region’s 1.2 million home fireplaces, which on winter days churn out nearly seven times as much fine particles as all of the power plants in Southern California.

A typical wildfire, by comparison, generates more fine particle pollution than the region’s beach fire rings by the time it burns through one acre of California chaparral, according to the California Air Resources Board.

Still, Southern California regulators call the concentrated, intensive wood burning close to beachfront homes a serious health problem. Open fires are one of the last uncontrolled sources of harmful fine particles and toxins that aggravate lungs and increase hospital admissions for respiratory problems such as bronchitis and asthma. So, in the regulators’ view, even one bonfire is as serious a health concern as a diesel-burning big rig.

The district says its monitoring found that pollution jumped significantly several hundred feet downwind of beach fire rings but dropped 98% at 700 feet from the fires as the smoke dispersed.

That finding led to a proposal to keep fire rings at least 700 feet from homes, or closer if the rings are spaced at least 100 feet apart. The regulations would also allow cities to ban all beach fires within their limits if they declare the fires a nuisance. The rules would almost certainly require the removal or relocation of all 60 fire rings in Newport Beach, where fires are concentrated and close to homes.

Huntington Beach, which welcomes beach fires, would be allowed to keep most of its 530 fire rings, except for about 30 that lie within 700 feet of a mobile home park.

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