Santa Barbara is not a port of call for the big container ships and other vessels hauling goods from Asia to California -- but it gets the soot and smog they leave behind.

These enormous ships, most of them flying foreign flags, take more than 7,000 trips through the Santa Barbara Channel yearly on their way to Los Angeles, travelling 10 miles from shore and spewing as much smog-producing nitrogen oxide as all of the cars, buses and trucks in the county combined.

The prevailing winds blow it all onto land.

A COSCO container ship travels through the Santa Barbara Channel spewing smoke from a dirty engine the size of a small power plant. Photo by Steve W. Sterner

Dressler says it's time to earmark bond money to retrofit the dirty ships with cleaner engines.

Marine shipping accounts for 40 percent of the nitrogen oxide pollution in the county every year and it is on the rise, Dressler said. By 2020, he said, if nothing is done, it will account for 75 percent. Nitrogen oxide is a key ingredient in ozone, a colorless, odorless gas that causes nausea and shortness of breath.

Officials have been exploring how concerned jurisdictions can compete for $42.7 billion in bond money approved by the voters in November. The bonds provide $19.9 billion for transportation, $10.4 billion for education, $5.4 billion for resources, $4.1 billon for flood control and $2.9 billion for housing.

The voters allocated $1 billion of the transportation bond for air quality improvements, and Dressler said he will lobby the state to set aside “a significant portion” to retrofit foreign ships with cleaner engine technology.

The alternative, he said, is to watch clean air gains evaporate onshore as imports go up and larger and larger ships embark on the “great circle route” from Asia to Southern California. They make the turn southward at a point offshore of Santa Maria and travel past every inch of the county’s 130-mile coastline — and back on the return trip.

Fifteen years ago, Santa Barbara County’s air district became the first on the West Coast to recognize the importance of the pollution from passing ships. Officials here began lobbying for changes at the level of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the International Maritime Organization, which oversees shipping treaties, but progress was glacially slow.

Steps have been taken to control set limits on pollution from new ships. But at the present turnover rate, it would take decades to make any real improvements in air quality, district officials said.

That’s why the district is pushing now for financial incentives — outright grants to retrofit ship engines, Dressler said. In a pilot project with other California air districts, the EPA and ship owners, Santa Barbara County's district helped retrofit the engine of the APL Singapore, a large container ship, and is testing its performance. The ship has made a trip to Asia with the retrofitted engine and is on its way back now.

“The pollution from these large ships is so big and there’s so much,” Dressler said, “if we just got a 50 percent reduction, it would make a big difference.”