| |
 |
|
MENU |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
SCCA Magazine |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
SCCA Magazine May-June 2010 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
What CARB wants from you now
It’s going to be a long, hot summer – at least
in Sacramento – where the California Air
Resources Board (CARB) staff is wrestling with
the truth that construction equipment isn’t
polluting as much as they thought it would, and
their off-road and on-road diesel regulations
are largely unnecessary.
CARB ordered its
staff to re-examine their numbers during the
April meeting in Sacramento when our industry
unveiled the latest information, taken from the
agency’s own database that showed CARB staff had
over-estimated emissions by as much as 379
percent. Some CARB board members tried to excuse
this gross incompetence by saying that it was
good their staff was “willing to own up to their
mistakes”. Others were flabbergasted and
embarrassed by the revelations.
After a
summer of frothy meetings, CARB staff is
expected to come back to the board with
additional amendments to the rules – although
only under the guise of economic relief and
after what was virtually an order from the
governor – and right now that looks like it will
happen in September. In the meantime, they will
be busy fending off a construction industry
armed with real-world statistics and science,
determined to get real change in these
destructive rules.
Here’s the latest
As an
industry, we already meet the regulatory targets
for emissions of nitrogen dioxide (NOx) and as
newer machines work their way into the
construction equipment market, we will continue
to meet or exceed the requirements as far into
the future as the eye can see.
We already
meet the particulate matter (PM) requirements
through 2019 – and again, new technology from
original equipment manufacturers is likely to
make the PM requirements superfluous.
CARB
staff’s reaction? They don’t believe it…sort of.
They admit they may have over-estimated
emissions, but only by 140 percent to 200
percent. Only?
CARB staff is also having a
hard time admitting that the science underlying
both regulations is a sham, despite the facts
demonstrated at a February science symposium
that there are no – zero – health effects
from diesel particulate matter in California.
They are willing to admit that Hien Tran,
their lead author on the last science report,
ordered his doctorate from a UPS store in New
York City.
The board has ordered a new health effects
report prepared. The new lead on the science
effort, Dr. Linda Smith, PhD, has a real
doctorate from University of California – San
Diego with a thesis in biochemistry. But she was
Hien Tran’s immediate supervisor and signed off
on his work, which resulted in the diesel rules.
CARB staff appears willing to admit that
there is a recession but they must be unsure
about its impact on the construction industry
because they are trotting out the usual
“Economic Analysis Survey” for both the on- and
off-road rules. “The purpose of this form is to
gather fleet data and financial information for
staff to evaluate the impact of the economy on
individual business that need to comply with the
(fill in the blank) regulation.”
Here’s all
the information they need:
California’s construction market contracted from
$95 billion in 2005 to $39 billion in 2009,
according to the Construction Industry Research
Board.
Unemployment in construction is at
Depression-plus levels – 42 percent – after
dropping from 948,500 in February 2006 to
553,800 in April 2010, according to the
Employment Development Department.
In the
questionnaire, CARB staff is asking for your
certified financial statements for the last five
years, as well as operating history on all your
equipment from 2006 to 2009. Our advice is NOT
to do it. If you need convincing, call Gordon
Downs with Downs Equipment Rental in
Bakersfield, who did provide all the data in the
run-up to the original off-road rule that was
adopted in July 2007.
There have been three
“workshops” so far on the industry’s request for
amendments, and there will be at least three
more before CARB staff goes to their war room to
craft a change that keeps as many of the rules
in place as possible.
And there’s more
Meanwhile, there are other air quality issues
you need to know about.
First, the CARB
waiver request to enforce the off-road rule is
still pending before the federal Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). SCCA was at the last
hearing on the matter in Washington in April,
requesting the agency take no action on the
request until there is a final regulation. The
EPA waiver is the only thing standing in the way
of a full-scale enforcement action from the CARB
mobile source enforcement unit. Right now they
can only write tickets for failure to register,
five-minute idling and sales notification
requirement violations, but with fines at
$10,000 per day per machine, that’s plenty. (If
you haven’t registered your equipment, you still
can and you should.)
Second, EPA is beginning
moves to lower acceptable ozone standards again.
The current proposal will make virtually every
city in the country out of compliance – in
California the proposed standard is below the
ambient ozone level for many regions – even if
there is no human activity. SCCA attended the
hearings on this measure held in Sacramento in
February, in opposition to this unnecessary
change and the American Road and Transportation
Builders Association (ARTBA) is working on the
issue in Washington.
Finally, AB 32 is alive
and well, at least as far as CARB is concerned,
and they are pushing forward on more than a
dozen fronts. The latest is a $20-million
research project in conjunction with the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) that will use ships, planes and hundreds
of investigators to determine how to actually
measure greenhouse gases, with the side benefit
of measuring and categorizing particulate matter
and ozone in the Los Angeles Basin and San
Joaquin Valley.
The scale of the
operation is unprecedented for an atmospheric
research project in
California. The project
is employing:
● Four aircraft – NOAA’s WP-3D,
Twin Otter and CIRPAS’ Twin Otter and NASA’s
King Air
● A research vessel (NOAA’s Atlantis)
to provide data about emissions and impacts of
shipping off California’s coast
● Two
ground/air monitoring super sites. Caltech’s
40-plus investigators will focus on organic or
carbonaceous PM and night-time chemistry and
Arvin’s (Kern County) 18 investigators will
provide a comprehensive suite of chemical
measurements to improve understanding of ozone
and PM formations in the San Joaquin Valley.
Apparently there is no state
budget crisis at CARB.
– By William
E. Davis, Executive Vice President, SCCA | |
 |
|
 | | | |
