GEORGE A. GONZALEZ - fieldi

80THE POLITICS OF AIR POLLUTIONThe bill was approved in the state Senate by a vote of twenty-nine tozero and was promptly signed by the Governor. It led to the creation of theLos Angeles Air Pollution Control District (APCD), established with a budgetof $178,000. As one historian of U.S. air pollution politics explains, thismade it the “best funded air pollution control agency in the nation” (Dewey2000, 44). Between the years 1948 and 1957 the APCD expended nearly $10million on pollution control efforts (Dewey 2000, 57).THE INITIATION AND FORMULATION OFCALIFORNIA’S AUTOMOBILE EMISSION REGIMEDespite the work of the APCD (Brienes 1975, chaps. 6 and 7), air pollutioncontinued to be a persistent, if not worsening, problem in the late 1940s andearly 1950s (Air Pollution Foundation 1961, 7; Carlin and Kocher 1971, 57;Krier and Ursin 1977, 72). A particularly egregious five days of heavy smogin Los Angeles during the fall of 1953, known as the “five-day siege ofsmog,” prompted locally oriented economic elites and the automotiverelated industries to create a policy-planning organization, the Air PollutionFoundation (Air Pollution Foundation 1961, 8; Krier and Ursin 1977, 83).The Foundation board of trustees was composed almost entirely of representativesfrom business and industry. Many of these individuals representedfirms whose future, in part, depended upon continued economic growth inLos Angeles. Among these locally oriented firms were the Southern CaliforniaGas Company, Bank of America, Broadway-Hale Stores (departmentstores), Western Air Lines, California Federal Savings, California Bank,Southern California Edison Company, Security-First National Bank, andBullock’s (department stores). Among the automotive-related firms representedon the Foundation’s board were each of the Big Three automakers,Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, U.S. Steel, and the Union Oil Company(Air Pollution Foundation 1961, 50–51). The Foundation’s list of contributorsdemonstrates the broad support that it enjoyed throughout the corporatecommunity. Throughout its seven-year existence (1954–1961) theFoundation had more than 200 donors, almost all of which were from corporateAmerica. Among its financial supporters were the Automobile ManufacturersAssociation, the Western Oil and Gas Association, the Los AngelesNewspaper Publishers Association, the Los Angeles Clearing HouseAssociation (made-up of major California banks), DuPont, Bechtel Corp.(construction), Kaiser Steel, and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company(Air Pollution Foundation 1961, 53–56).The Foundation sought “to assemble a competent technical staff to organizeand direct a broad program of cooperation, research, and public information”on the issue of smog in southern California. Additionally, the Foundationplanned to “determine what remains to be done and to employ