Panel Endorses Traps for Cars to Hold Vapors
A House panel overrode opposition from auto makers Thursday and voted to require that cars built in the future be fitted with special canisters to trap smog-causing vapors released during refueling.
The vote was hailed by environmentalists as a significant victory in the legislative battle, currently being fought in the House Energy and Commerce health and environment subcommittee, to strengthen President Bush’s proposed clean air bill.
However, a much more momentous battle was taking place behind the scenes, in closed-door negotiations where the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), was fighting both the Administration and the auto industry in an effort to impose stricter controls on the single biggest source of urban smog--emissions from motor vehicle tailpipes.
‘Overriding Issue’
“Compared to what’s going on behind the scenes, the fight on the committee floor so far is just minor skirmishing,” one legislative source said. “Tailpipes is the one overriding issue, and both sides are digging their heels in on it.”
Waxman, defeated in an attempt Tuesday to get stricter emissions standards incorporated into the Bush bill, has been negotiating with several other committee members over a compromise. The compromise would extend the standards planned for California by 1995 to the rest of the country.
However, legislative sources said that the talks remain deadlocked over Waxman’s insistence on a second round of emission cuts to further reduce the national standards by the year 2000.
Waxman originally called for a reduction of hydrocarbon emissions--a major component of smog--by 39% in 1993. Nitrogen oxides, another tailpipe component of smog, would be cut 60%. In the year 2,000, both pollutants would be cut a further 50%.
The co-sponsors of the Bush bill, Reps. John D. Dingell (D-Mich) and Norman F. Lent (R-N.Y.), have fiercely criticized Waxman’s reductions as technologically unfeasible and prohibitively expensive, even if the technology to achieve them is developed.
The compromise offered by Waxman is believed to relax the second round reductions somewhat, but Lent told reporters that the two sides are still far apart.
The canisters amendment, passed on a voice vote, would require auto makers to put vapor-collecting devices on the gasoline tanks of all cars and light trucks within four years of the clean air bill’s passage.
Waxman said that the canisters, designed to trap vapors released into the air when a car is being refueled, would lower the overall level of hydrocarbon emissions by more than 3% at a cost of about $14 per vehicle.
