Stringent New Smog Controls on Cars Ordered
In a major boost toward cleaning up the smoggy Los Angeles Basin, the state Air Resources Board on Thursday ordered stringent new tailpipe emission controls on cars and pickup trucks beginning in the 1993 model year.
The standard was approved on an 8-0 vote over the objections of automobile manufacturers, who warned that it would be too costly and technologically difficult to meet.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District and some environmentalists praised the new standard as a major step forward, although they said the plan does not go far enough and takes too long to go into effect.
Expected Effect
The new rules would reduce carbon monoxide emissions from new cars by 50% and emissions of smog-forming hydrocarbons by 30% by 1997--the end of a three-year phase-in period. The rules, Chrysler Motors engineer Gordon E. Allardyce told the board, would raise the price of new cars from $200 to $330. The ARB’s estimate is $65 per car.
It was the first time since 1977 that the resources board had tightened its hydrocarbon standard. The carbon monoxide standard was last revised in 1981. Hydrocarbons are produced by unburned fuel, such as gasoline vapors that leak from a car’s fuel system. Poisonous carbon monoxide gas is produced by burning fuel.
‘We think this is one of the . . . most important rules the ARB will consider in the next two or three years,” said Paul Wuebben, manager of the AQMD’s clean fuels program. He called the action “the first significant litmus test of the ARB’s commitment” in supporting the AQMD’s 20-year plan to bring the South Coast Air Basin into compliance with federal clean air standards.
Hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen are the major ingredients of photochemical smog. Until now, because of limits in technology, the board has focused mainly on emissions of nitrogen oxides, which also are produced by engine combustion.
The state board also voted to require that auto makers design smog control devices to control emissions for at least 100,000 miles--double the current durability requirement--beginning in 1993. California would become the first state to impose such a stringent smog control standard. More than 60% of cars in California have been driven more than 50,000 miles, and account for almost 70% of pollution from automobiles.
By the year 2010, as the new, cleaner cars replace older models, emissions of hydrocarbons would be cut by 70 tons a day statewide. Carbon monoxide emissions would be reduced by 1,000 tons a day statewide.
Half of those reductions would occur in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino, which make up the South Coast Air Basin.
Meeting U.S. Standards
Gladys Meade, environmental manager of the American Lung Assn. of California, said the state’s action is “critically important” to the success of the AQMD’s clean air plan to attain federal clean air standards for carbon monoxide, ozone and nitrogen dioxide within 20 years. The AQMD board approved the strategy last March.
The reductions would amount to 10% of the four-county basin’s current carbon monoxide emissions of between 4,500 and 5,000 tons a day, and about 5% of current hydrocarbon emissions from motor vehicles.
Nonetheless, Wuebben said the ARB could have done better. He said the 100,000-mile durability requirement should take effect in 1994, instead of being phased in through 1997.
“This is simply too long, given the gravity of Southern California’s air quality problem,” Wuebben told the ARB.
At one point, Air Resources Board executive officer James Boyd accused Wuebben of using “inflammatory” language and “grandstanding” in urging the ARB to go further. Boyd vowed to take up the issue with Wuebben’s boss, AQMD executive officer James M. Lents.
Later, Wuebben said he was astonished and “disappointed” by Boyd’s outburst. “I couldn’t believe Boyd, in front of everyone in public, saying those things,” Wuebben said.
At the same time, John White of the Sierra Club charged that the ARB plan “reflects excessive caution.”
“In my view, the proposal simply does not go far enough fast enough, given the magnitude of the impact which vehicular emissions have on the severity of ozone, visibility and atmospheric acidity levels throughout California, especially in Southern California and the inland valleys of the north,” White said.
Similar objections were raised in a letter to the resources board signed by state Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside) and Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto).
Earlier, automobile manufacturers generally said they could comply with part of the new standard requiring cars rolling off assembly lines to meet more stringent carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emission standards. The current hydrocarbon limit is .39 grams per mile. It would be reduced to .25 grams per mile at 50,000 miles and .31 grams per mile at 100,000 miles under the new standard.
The carbon monoxide limit would be pushed down to 3.4 grams per mile at 50,000 miles and 4.1 grams per mile at 100,000 miles. It is now a flat 7 grams per mile.
But auto makers warned that it would be difficult for them to give assurances that a tough standard could be met after a car had been on the road for 100,000 miles.
“The proposal would push emission control system development to the very edge of feasibility,” said Joe Calhoun of General Motors.
