Panel to consider scaling back auto emission testing program

Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 13, 2006 at midnight

Text size

More Local News

A state air quality panel this week could make life easier for thousands of drivers in the metro area by scaling back on requirements of the much-maligned auto emission testing program.

But in doing so, the panel will have to consider loosening pollution rules at a time when the region is on the cusp of formally violating Environmental Protection Agency air pollution standards for ground-level ozone - a fate that would trigger new and onerous restrictions and oversight on metro area growth.

Changes to emission testing, as well as decisions on controversial proposals to increase regulation of pollutants produced by oil and gas exploration across the state, will be part of a three-day meeting of the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission slated for Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

At issue for car emission testing: should regulators increase the number of years that new cars are exempt from the program? Now, drivers can skip testing for a car's first four years with the idea that such young cars are unlikely to have serious mechanical or emission control system problems that can lead to more pollution.

But the air panel - at the behest of the outgoing administration of Gov. Bill Owens - will consider increasing the exemption from an additional year to an additional four years. Choosing the latter would mean drivers could go eight years with a new car before submitting it to a tailpipe test.

One caution: The changes, if approved, wouldn't take effect right away. State lawmakers and the federal EPA must OK them, which could delay the matter until as late as 2009.

It would also mean slight increases in air pollution, depending on how many more cars are exempted from the testing, regulators say. Right now, emission testing is credited with shaving about six tons per day of smog-forming volatile organic compounds from the air. It would shave just five if another four model years of cars were allowed to skip testing.

It's a "trade-off" according to Mike Silverstein, a top regulator at Colorado's Air Pollution Control Division, between a bit more pollution and more convenience for motorists.

But it's a trade-off that comes at a time when the metro area is hovering just outside a violation of EPA health-based air quality standards for ozone. In fact, should the region suffer excessively high readings again this summer, there's a good chance the region would fall back on the federal agency's dirty-air list, triggering a number of cumbersome bureaucratic steps that make it harder to bring in new industries or expand highways.

On the other hand, allowing one additional ton per day of VOCs from relaxed auto emission testing is small potatoes when contrasted with the oil and gas industry. In that case, regulators are dealing with emissions at another order of magnitude.

For example, they aim to cut emissions from storage tanks in gas fields northeast of Denver from more than 200 tons to 91 tons a day.

Also, auto emission testing will become less and less effective in the years ahead. That's because older, dirtier cars are taken off the road in favor of newer, cleaner-burning cars.

The latest federal auto emission standards took effect in 2002, meaning hundreds of thousands of cars from the 1980s and 1990s still on the road will eventually be replaced by far cleaner models. That doesn't include the impacts from the increase in hybrid cars, which sometimes emit nothing because they also run on electricity.

Scaling back auto emission tests also has a major political component: Late last year, Gov. Bill Owens and his then-director of the state health department, Doug Benevento, called on state lawmakers and officials to do away with the emissions testing, arguing it's not needed anymore to keep the metro area's air clean.

Regulators and state lawmakers answered that the region can't do away with the program immediately, but agreed to push ahead faster with steps to make testing more convenient for more motorists.

That mainly involves stepping up use of "drive-by" testing that uses remote sensing to gauge emissions from a car as a motorist enters or exists a freeway ramp, saving drivers a trip to a centralized testing station.

Air quality commissioners Thursday will also consider giving a green light to accelerating that program, as well as whether to take steps toward identifying the dirtiest cars so that most clean cars can be left alone altogether.

Air quality hearing

Colorado's Air Quality Control Commission will meet this week to tackle several major issues:

• Automobile emission testing - Consider changes to the metro area's program, including more use of "drive-by" emission testing on freeway ramps and requiring fewer cars to pass the biennial test.

• Power plants and factories - Consider changing rules to allow regulators and the public to pursue penalties against plants and factories when malfunctions lead to violations of emission limits.

• Oil and gas operations - Consider new regulations to cut emissions.

• When and where: 9 a.m. Thursday and Friday in the Wittemeyer Courtroom at the University of Colorado's Wolf Law Building, 2450 Kittredge Loop Road, in Boulder. 9 a.m. Sunday in at the Sabin Room at the Colorado Department at Public Health and Environment, 4300 Cherry Creek Drive South, in Glendale.

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News