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State smog controls backed

National research group says the public benefits outweigh cost to industry

Chris Bowman
The Sacramento Bee
Friday, March 17, 2006

 

California has won scientific backing in its battles with automakers and engine manufacturers over adopting smog controls more protective - and often costlier - than federal standards.
In a study released Thursday, the independent National Research Council concluded that California's tougher tailpipe exhaust standards still are needed to combat chronic pollution in the Sacramento region, San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles basin.

A council committee of 11 experts in engineering, health and public policy said the economic and public health gains from having the cleanest-in-the-nation cars, trucks and power equipment outweigh the "additional costs and complexity" those stricter rules impose on industry and consumers.

"California served as the laboratory for technologies that became available nationwide ... and the entire nation benefited from cleaner air," said David Allen, a University of Texas chemical engineering professor who headed the study committee.

At issue is California's unique authority under federal law to adopt fuel and engine emission standards more stringent than those the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets nationwide. Other states can piggyback on California standards but cannot adopt their own.

California attained the special power under the U.S. Air Quality Act of 1967, before the first federal standards for auto emissions took effect. Congress made the exception because Southern California's smog was "extreme," and because the state led the nation in requiring exhaust controls on new vehicles, effectively serving as a proving ground for technologies.

The double set of standards has frustrated national manufacturers for decades, most recently with California's first-in-the-nation rule to cut auto exhausts linked to global warming.

Congress mandated the Research Council report in 2003 in a deal between Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.

Bond tried for years to block California's efforts to curtail exhausts from small engines, such as those powering lawn mowers, saying the costs of making the lower-polluting engines could force production overseas. The leading small-engine manufacturer, Briggs & Stratton Corp., has two plants in Missouri.

The committee was asked to assess the procedures used by California and other states to develop regulations that are tougher than federal rules and compare the health and economic effects of the different standards.

The committee found California's practices "scientificially and technically valid."

"Reasons for Congress giving California this waiver are still in existence," Allen said, speaking at a teleconference Thursday in Washington, D.C.

The committee found that the California Air Resources Board "often tightens mobile-source emissions standards earlier and to a greater extent than the Environmental Protection Agency." On small engines, the committee said, "California should continue its pioneering role."

Bond saw the report as an endorsement of his concerns over job layoffs, said his spokesman, Rob Ostrander.

"Senator Bond will continue to ensure that as California acts to clean up its own mess, that at a minimum their actions do not hurt Missouri workers and families," Ostrander said.

The California air board viewed the report differently.

"It vindicates our need for separate standards because of the magnitude of our air pollution problem," said Jerry Martin, board spokesman.

Environmentalists, public health advocates and associations of state and local air pollution regulators said they were pleased the research council did not recommend changes that would restrict the ability of states to follow California's standards.

"State initiatives were the kick in the pants automakers needed to produce the cleanest cars on the market today," said Michelle Robinson, an advocate with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C.

California asserted its special rights under the federal air pollution law beginning in the 1970s, becoming first in the nation to take toxic lead out of gasoline and require pollution-cutting catalytic converters on vehicles' exhaust systems.

Some of the air board's innovations have flopped, said Gary Marchant, an Arizona State University law professor and member of the study group. "But we also found there were spectacular successes ... and that the successes were spread to other states in the nation."

The research council said the report does not address the California greenhouse gas regulations because the state adopted them after the study was launched.

Last year, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island adopted California's rule that clamps down on auto emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas linked to global warming.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is trying to win a court order to block the rule, which requires automakers to reduce the heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases from cars and light-duty trucks beginning with model year 2009.