Hermosa Hopes Study to Make Good Scents : Pollution: City Council launches a review of ‘the problem of vapors and odors’ emanating from body shops and other businesses.

Some residents of Hermosa Beach smell more than briny sea breezes when they put their noses to the air.

Paint fumes emanating from the city’s dozen auto body shops coupled with the greasy odor wafting above some restaurants have left a portion of Hermosa’s population with olfactory nerves in distress.

“We have a nice patio but we can’t use it because of the smell,” said Maurice Beaudet, a restaurateur who lives upwind from an automobile painting shop. “People come into the house and say, ‘Is someone painting in here?’ ”

Beaudet and his wife, Tonya, joined with about a dozen neighbors earlier this year to form Neighbors Around Body Shops, a loosely organized group that is pressuring the city to block any new auto paint shops and impose stricter conditions on those already in business.

The group’s first campaign began this summer, when it lobbied against a new shop proposed near the neighborhood at Aviation Boulevard and Prospect Avenue. After a rancorous debate before the Planning Commission, the shop owner abandoned his plans and opted to open in another city.

The neighbors won another victory last week when the City Council launched a study into “the problem of vapors and odors” in the community. The review will look at what the South Coast Air Quality Management District does to regulate emissions from body shops and other businesses. It will also examine whether the city should impose stricter standards.

“We have a lot of body shops,” said Planning Commissioner Joseph DiMonda. “They are not just unsightly. They produce offensive odors. Some of them are trying to be good neighbors and some could not care less.”

The Planning Commission proposed the odor study, DiMonda said, because in the past it has provided vague standards to auto body shops that are under review, telling them to meet AQMD standards and paint vehicles behind closed doors. The study will provide city staff members with more information on spraying technology and perhaps lead to regulations requiring state-of-the-art spray booths and filtration systems for all car painting, he said.

Unlike body shops, no specific restaurants have been the focus of widespread community complaints about emissions. Nonetheless, restaurants were added to the study when resident Jim Lissner recently complained to city officials that some fast food restaurants pour out more pollution than body shops of the same size. Although the smell of chicken in the air may be more pleasant than paint, Lissner said, the restaurants also release burnt grease and other noxious odors.

“Although the most obvious problem with noxious odors and vapors are from auto body and painting businesses,” Associate Planner Ken Robertson said in a staff report, “other automotive businesses, and perhaps some food establishments, cause similar problems.”

One reason the odor issue is arising in Hermosa Beach and not in other South Bay cities is the close proximity of residences and businesses in Hermosa’s densely populated 1.3 square miles.

Some auto body shop owners argue that the responsible members of their industry are being unfairly grouped with those who do not follow the rules. They said the odors in the community may have a number of sources.

Fernando Yanez, who opened Ocean Drive Auto Body and Paint in 1988, said he has a fully enclosed spray booth that filters paint fumes before they are released. The device cost him about $15,000. He blamed the odor problem on “Mickey Mouse” body shop operations that do not have the latest technology. Restaurants, laundries and other businesses add to the problem, he said.

The manager of Buck’s Auto Body and Fender Works, who declined to give his name, said that his body shop is blamed for odors it does not produce. He said restaurant emissions and houses that are being painted are responsible for some of the smells. A neighbor once complained about paint fumes coming from Buck’s on a day when no employees were painting, the manager said.

The Beaudets--who own a vegetarian restaurant in Hermosa Beach called The Spot--first noticed the smell outside their 11th Street home days after moving in two years ago. They said their goal is to force body shop owners to act responsibly, not to shut down businesses.

Since the neighbors organized, they have regularly attended city meetings and their vocabularies have grown to include such terms as volatile organic compounds or VOCs, a technical term used by the AQMD to describe paint fumes and other airborne particles.

The Beaudets said they recently complained to the AQMD about a body shop’s emissions, but by the time the inspector arrived, the painting was finished and the odors were gone.

AQMD officials acknowledged that the number of calls received by their complaint line makes it impossible to respond to every resident or arrive as promptly as they would like. The AQMD has about 200 inspectors handling all types of air pollution in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, according to the agency.

“The problem with odors is they tend to be intermittent,” said AQMD spokesman Bill Kelly “They are released in a puff and, by the time we get an inspector there, the odor has dissipated.”

The AQMD does regulate the types of emissions that Hermosa Beach is concerned about, Kelly said. AQMD regulations prohibit odors that cause a public nuisance, which is defined as an emission that prompts at least 10 written complaints.

AQMD officials are currently working with the California Restaurant Assn. to draft more stringent regulations covering the emission of grease particles from restaurants. Draft regulations should be available for public comment next spring.