Brown Pushes Measure to Require Vapor-Arrester on California Cars

SACRAMENTO — The “California car,” a complicated piece of machinery produced by Detroit auto makers to meet the state’s tough emission control standards, would undergo further modification under legislation announced Monday by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

Brown, in a bill that he admitted was introduced at the request of the convenience store industry, wants to require automobile manufacturers, beginning in 1991, to outfit cars sold in California with a new carbon canister device to collect fuel vapors now escaping into the atmosphere and polluting the air.

But a fight is shaping up similar to earlier battles waged in the Legislature over the state’s stricter emissions standards, seat belts and air bag safety devices.

Currently California’s tougher air pollution standards require cars sold here to contain a finer-tuned emissions-control system than in the other 49 states, at an extra cost that one authoritative industry source put at $99 a car.

Brown, often said to be the second most powerful man in the Capitol after Gov. George Deukmejian, forced through a law two years ago that requires the “California car” to be outfitted with air bags or other passive restraints, such as automatic seat belts.

Now, he wants to require that cars sold here contain the canister recovery system, which would be fitted into the engine compartment or the trunk of a vehicle, collect the vapors and allow them to be burned up as fuel.

Brown contends that the canisters could “reduce hydrocarbon emissions by 10 to 45 tons a day in the South Coast Air Basin alone.”

Automobile manufacturers are opposing the Brown bill, which is up for its first legislative hearing today in the Assembly Transportation Committee.

Richard L. Dugally, lobbyist for Ford Motor Co., said the devices Brown wants installed would cost $120 a car, substantially more than the Speaker’s $14-a-car estimate.

Dugally said Ford and other auto manufacturers are not opposed so much to canisters as they are to the idea of having to put them only on California cars.

Called ‘Redundant’

The lobbyist for Ford also called the devices “redundant,” pointing out that nozzles required by California law on gas pumps here are designed to do exactly what the canisters are supposed to do.

That draws the convenience store industry into the debate, because they say outfitting gas pumps can cost individual stores up to $25,000, a major capital outlay.

Motorists usually see only the oversize nozzles, but each of the hand-held gas pumps require special lines leading to underground storage tanks. Substantial expense is required to maintain and keep them operating properly, industry spokesmen said.

Brown, using an argument advanced by the convenience store industry, told reporters at a Capitol news conference that the carbon canister devices are much cheaper and more efficient in capturing escaping vapors than the special gas pump nozzles now required in the state’s “critical air basins.”

He strongly denied that his legislation is intended to provide justification for doing away with the nozzles. Brown argues that the canisters would collect gases now missed by the nozzles.

“It has absolutely nothing to do with nozzles or the removal of nozzles,” Brown asserted.

Increased Pressure

The Speaker conceded, however, that if the canisters were required in California, other states would be under increased pressure to accept them.

There already is a bill in Congress that would require the canisters, and a number of states are moving closer to requiring the costly gas pump nozzles used in California.

The California Air Resources Board, which required installation of the gas pump nozzles, has not taken a position on Brown’s bill. But ARB spokesman Bill Sessa said the board has long held that the canisters could be a valuable supplement to the nozzles but not a replacement.

Brown said he introduced the bill at the request of Kathleen Snodgrass, a former aide in his Assembly office who is now working as a lobbyist with a firm headed by Clayton R. Jackson, who represents the National Assn. of Convenience Stores.