EPA Orders Tougher Auto Emission Tests : Environment: New rules would set up inspection centers and apply to Los Angeles and 180 other areas. Agency sees 31% cut in pollution.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced new requirements Thursday that probably will shift vehicle smog checks from neighborhood garages to large testing centers outfitted with more sophisticated equipment.

EPA officials said that the requirements, to take effect Jan. 1, 1995, will result in shorter waiting lines and more exacting tests. The new centers will be strongly discouraged from making repairs, a provision that EPA Chairman William K. Reilly said will prevent smog-check specialists from flunking autos so that they can make costly but unnecessary repairs.

The new rules, developed under the Clean Air Act of 1990, will apply in Los Angeles and 180 other urban areas with significant pollution problems. The regulations require that inspection stations be conveniently located in metropolitan areas within five miles of 80% of all residents.

Reilly said that the cost of automobile repairs resulting from the more demanding tests could increase by $500 million a year nationwide. But much of these costs, he said, would be offset by the savings in fuel arising from more efficient car performances, a reduction that he estimated at 15 million barrels of gasoline a year.

While the Los Angeles area already has strict requirements governing pollution control, the new EPA rules “actually will be quite helpful to California and will result in more centralized vehicle inspection stations,” according to David Driesen, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based environmental group that has pushed for the new rules.

Other California areas singled out by the EPA Thursday for beefed-up emissions testing include Orange and Riverside counties, the cities of San Bernardino and San Diego and Ventura County. But in actuality, the new standards will affect the entire state.

California currently has the so-called Smog Check program, which requires inspection of all of the state’s cars every two years and requires the worst polluters to be repaired. State regulators have been working for the last six months to revamp Smog Check in preparation for meeting these new EPA guidelines. Legislation for that purpose is expected to be introduced in January.

Reilly said that the new inspection program will cut vehicle emissions and carbon monoxide releases by up to 31%, explaining that these reductions represent “the single most significant action I know to reduce air pollution.”

The tests will require duplicating actual driving conditions and will involve more accurate measurement of tailpipe emissions, including putting cars on a treadmill. In addition, they will include a pressure check to identify evaporative emission leaks in the fuel system and a check to make sure fuel vapors are routed to the engine and burned as fuel.

Although the new tests are more detailed, Reilly estimated that each will take just 10 minutes because of improved equipment.

In general, the new testing program will be three times more effective than most current ones, Reilly said. It is likely to require repair work on one of every five vehicles, but repair costs may be offset by the greater fuel savings, EPA officials said.

Driesen said that the system allowing some neighborhood stations to both test and repair a vehicle has involved “an inherent conflict-of-interest that calls into question the validity of the tests.” In addition, he said, the new EPA rules will provide for much more sophisticated and accurate testing.

“Fifteen years of experience has shown that combined test and repair just does not work,” Driesen said. “Under the old program, mechanics had an incentive to fail cars that should pass and a mechanic had an incentive to pass a car once he worked on it.”

But the new EPA plan stopped short of requiring a centralized program with completely separate test and repair facilities. “It’s not impossible” for a state to have testing and repair done by the same outlet, said David Howekamp, director of the air and toxics division for the EPA’s Western region, but the agency would hold such a program to a “higher standard” for pollution reduction.

California is currently “looking at a variety of ways of structuring the (Smog Check) program, different kinds of equipment, different ways of improving quality of repair on the cars,” said Bill Sessa, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board. “We’re confident we can design a program to take as much pollution out of the air as the EPA is calling for, but we don’t know exactly how the program is going to be designed.”

EPA officials said that the new program’s fuel economy savings of 7% to 13% should largely offset the cost of repairs, which could range from $38 to $120. But 80% of all vehicles are likely to pass the new tests without requiring any repairs, they said.

William G. Rosenberg, EPA assistant administrator, said that “it simply makes sense to keep high-tech cars using high-tech fuels well maintained.”

Times environmental writer Maria L. La Ganga in Los Angeles contributed to this story.