Court Upholds EPA Rules on Clean-Burning Diesel

For decades, as the government has cracked down on car pollution, heavy trucks and buses have been allowed to belch noxious fumes from dirty diesel fuel. But diesel’s special status, protected through relentless lobbying, moved close to extinction Friday.

A federal appeals court, discarding challenges by the nation’s oil companies and a major diesel engine manufacturer, upheld Environmental Protection Agency rules aimed at forcing trucks and buses to clean up.

The regulations, among the few initiated by the Clinton administration and embraced by the Bush administration, require manufacturers of heavy trucks and buses to cut 95% of the harmful pollutants from tailpipes of diesel vehicles by the 2007 model year. They also mandate a 97% reduction in the sulfur in the diesel fuel that powers the vehicles.

Thousands of early deaths and hundreds of thousands of cases of chronic and acute bronchitis and asthma attacks will be avoided each year, EPA officials said.

“Now all Americans will receive significant health and environmental benefits from the dramatic cuts in air pollution released from these large trucks and buses,” EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said.

The Bush administration was apparently won over by a combination of the regulations’ promised benefits and the diverse groups--from the auto industry to the Natural Resources Defense Council--supporting them.

Once fully implemented, the rule will cut 2.6 million tons annually of smog-causing nitrogen oxide emissions and 11,000 tons of soot or particulate matter, the EPA estimated. And 8,300 premature deaths a year will be prevented, the agency said.

The new diesel rule also is expected to have an array of positive environmental consequences. It will cut haze in the nation’s prized wilderness settings, such as national parks; cut smog in cities such as Los Angeles; reduce acid rain; and improve water quality in large waterways where excess nitrogen is killing sea life.

“Today’s decision paves the way for the biggest air quality and public health advance since we took lead out of gasoline more than 20 years ago,” said Richard Kassel, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There’s nothing on the radar screen that will come close in terms of environmental improvements and public health benefits.”

The National Petrochemical & Refiners Assn., one of the organizations that sued the EPA, argued in its lawsuit that the regulation required such quick reductions in the sulfur content of fuels that the industry would not be able to keep up and shortages would result.

In a statement responding to the court ruling, the association said it still believed “this costly regulation will have adverse consequences for fuel supplies and the nation’s refining industry.”

Regulation of diesel truck emissions lagged behind that of passenger vehicles because in 1970, when the Clean Air Act was written, many scientists believed that cars were a bigger problem. Scientists believed that lead and carbon monoxide were bigger threats, and gasoline-burning engines were major culprits.

In recent decades, scientists have become increasingly aware of the danger to public health and the environment presented by sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulates. Heavy lobbying from the oil and trucking industries managed to protect diesel-burning engines from regulation for years. But over the last few years, an odd-couple alliance merged to promote the diesel standards developed by the Clinton administration.

One of the fiercest advocates of these rules was the auto industry, which wants to sell diesel cars in America. However, those cars need low-sulfur fuel to meet emission standards, which is not widely available in the U.S. Under these rules, refiners would produce more of the low-sulfur fuel sooner, auto makers said.

The states joined in the drive for the tough standards. Federal law requires them to meet clean-air standards.

In part because of this unusual partnership, the Bush administration moved quickly to implement the diesel rules while putting on hold dozens of other environmental regulations that had been proposed or finalized in the last months of the Clinton administration.

Friday’s decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will clear up the uncertainty that has surrounded the new standards because of the litigation, and make it more likely that the petroleum and engine manufacturers can meet them, environmentalists and industry officials said.

The court rejected complaints by the industries that they could not meet the EPA’s deadlines.

“The court’s opinion ratifies EPA’s conclusions that dramatic reductions in the emission of pollutants are technologically feasible,” said Tom Sansonetti, assistant attorney general for environment and natural resources.

Cummins Inc., a Columbus, Ind.-based manufacturer of diesel engines, argued there is not current technology available to adequately strip smog-causing nitrogen oxide emissions to the levels required by the new standard. Other manufacturers and the EPA disagreed.