EPA contemplates even more emission rules

WASHINGTON, (Sept. 15, 2003) — While trucking fleets try to cope with last year’s forced engine emission regulations, and brace for an even more stringent round of rules scheduled for ’07, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a report indicating that current standards it introduced in 1997 may not be adequate and should be tightened further.

In a 400-page draft paper it released recently, the EPA says that new standards — including the reduction of hydrocarbons plus nitrogen oxides (NMHC+NOx) emissions from diesel engines made after 2002 — do not adequately protect the elderly and people with respiratory problems. The trucking industry currently is abiding by a NMHC+NOx standard of 2.5 g/bhp-hr, with even more stringent rules being enforced over the next few years.

The findings could become the basis for even more demanding pollution-control requirements to reduce the amount of microscopic soot emitted by trucks, cars, factories and power plants. As a result, the analysis recommends the allowable concentrations be reduced further, possibly as much as 50 per cent for the 24-hour standard and 20 per cent for the annual average standard. The EPA soon expects to determine what areas of the U.S, may have to impose additional pollution-control measures because their air is so dirty it does not meet the standard.

Such a step could yet again put the EPA at odds with industry groups like trucking fleets and engine manufacturers which complained the1997 rules were based on uncertain science and would cost industry tens of billions of dollars. Industry then challenged the standards all the way to the Supreme Court, which eventually upheld them.

“Of course, we’re going to question the adequacy of the science. We’ll be citing different studies, different results,” Glen Kedzie, an attorney for the American Trucking Associations, told the Associated Press.

— with files from Associated Press