First, target polluters

Fight to reduce ozone needn't raise cost of driving for all

The Rocky

Published November 13, 2007 at 10:07 p.m.

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The Regional Air Quality Council has to walk a tightrope as it mulls measures to reduce ozone pollution on the Front Range.

The council will propose rules that are expected to bring the region back in compliance with federal standardso any day now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is likely to declare most of the Front Range in violation.

The reason we say "are expected to" is that it's difficult to ensure that regulations targeting the chemicals that form ozone will deliver the reductions they promise.

And if local officials impose rules that don't reduce ozone but make driving more expensive - face it, private motor vehicles are in regulators' cross-hairs - Coloradans could pay a lot more to operate their cars and ozone levels would still exceed federal limits.

Local regulators should focus on the most cost-effective remedies - led by the state's remote-sensing emissions tests - and leave esoteric and less-proven alternatives on the shelf.

In 2006, the legislature voted to expand the successful roadside emissions tests so that they target high-emitting vehicles, rather than just give clean cars a passing grade. The remote-sensing technology, developed a couple of decades ago by University of Denver chemistry professor Donald Stedman, has found that a tiny fraction of cars and trucks - primarily older vehicles in bad repair - produce the lion's share of ozone-forming emissions from cars.

To date, the program has identified low-emitting vehicles so their owners can pass smog checks without having to go to an Envirotest center for a stationary test. Next year, the technology will start to identify gross polluters. Vehicle owners will be notified and will have to repair their vehicles and get them retested.

Moreover, a "cash for clunkers" program is in the works that would pay owners to retire the worst polluters if those cars can't be repaired.

These "dirty screen" and "cash for clunkers" initiatives should make an impact.

Several other items the council is considering would cost too much given the meager relief that they are likely to provide.

Adopting California's "cleaner" gasoline formulas might have only a negligible effect on ozone. Golden State regulators claim the fuel "reduces smog-forming emissions . . . by 15 percent." But researchers including Douglas Lawson, a scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a member of the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission, have found no ozone reductions from California's switch to cleaner fuels.

Bringing that gasoline to Colorado would, however, raise local gas prices at least 8 cents a gallon. That means an extra dollar or two per fill-up for little benefit.

Nor should Colorado pin its hopes for reduced ozone on joining California and 15 other states that want further cuts in tailpipe emissions from new cars. As Lawson said in a presentation to the regional air council's ozone working group, "Tightening tailpipe standards does little or nothing to improve ozone air quality" because newer cars aren't the problem - it's older or malfunctioning cars that need repairs.

Target the polluters. It's sound advice in other areas of environmental regulation and it remains sound advice for state officials as they develop ozone-reducing proposals to submit to the EPA.

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