Emission tests barely worked; Grand predictions for emissions-test program turn hazy

Eight years after the Denver area started centralized pollution testing for cars, there's scant evidence that the $44 million-a-year program has done much to clear the region's air.

And now, as the program moves into a new era of drive-by tailpipe screening, even its backers say whatever impact it might have is shriveling by the year as new, cleaner-burning cars generate less and less pollution.

In 1995, drivers began taking their cars to one of 15 testing stations throughout the metro area. Since then, the Colorado health department has often led the cheers for the program, saying it cut tailpipe emissions of carbon-monoxide pollution by as much as one-third.

But audits of the program, independent experts and a 2001 study by the prestigious National Research Council all say evidence is skimpy that the pollution cuts ever reached the levels advertised by the health department.

Indeed, outside studies throughout the years come closer to backing critics' contentions that the program made only a small dent in air pollution, probably in the range of 4 percent to 8 percent - and no higher than a 15 percent reduction in carbon monoxide.

Even a former health department staffer who once championed the program says its impact on air pollution was overstated - mainly because of Environmental Protection Agency computer projections that made too many upbeat assumptions.

"I think we were too optimistic in accepting the (computer) model," said Jerry Gallagher, who supervised efforts to cut auto emissions for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for nearly 20 years, from 1980 to 1999.

While the program still has its defenders, including the federal EPA, they, too, are saying it's time to shift to a newer approach that will spare tens of thousands of drivers the hassle of taking their cars to an emissions station every two years.

But longtime critics of the program wonder why the state continues with a program when auditors say that carbon monoxide will continue to fall even if the program is scrapped altogether.

"We expect to see a continued decline in emissions as older vehicles are replaced by newer vehicles, even without the (emissions testing) program," said the most recent state audit of the program by Environ International Corp., a California-based consultant.

But there are several barriers to simply scrapping the program. For one thing, Colorado is under an EPA mandate to conduct the tests and must prove to the agency it can hold the line on carbon-monoxide pollution if it were to dump them.

"It's probably fair to say (the program) has a finite future," said Christopher Dann, a spokesman for the health department. "How long a future we cannot say yet. That's one of the things we're continually looking at."

Colorado started emissions testing in 1981. For much of that time, drivers could take their cars to any one of hundreds of independent mechanics in the metro area for a simpler version of an emissions test.

But in 1995, with the region still out of compliance with federal health limits on carbon monoxide and under pressure from the EPA to solve the problem, the Denver area shifted to a centralized approach.

Under the new regime, a single contractor, Envirotest, conducted a 240-second tailpipe test with a car running at high speeds on a spinning device called a dynamometer.

The test was designed to better detect excessive carbon-monoxide emissions. Cars that fail the test must pass - presumably by getting emissions-related repairs - before the drivers can renew their registration in the seven-county metro area.

For years, the health department proudly cited the program's success. In the mid- to late 1990s, the agency's director, Patti Shwayder, repeatedly said the inspection program was slashing carbon-monoxide levels by 31 percent - with some claims reaching 37 percent.

But critics said - and now even health department officials themselves acknowledge - those totals were based on an EPA computer program that crunched a vast array of data about fuel types, air temperature and miles traveled, but made generous assumptions that led to inflated estimates of the test's impact.

• Presumed everyone whose car failed the test promptly repaired it and emissions were cut - an assertion that program statistics repeatedly indicate are wrong. At least 20 percent of failing cars never returned for a retest.

• Assumed cars that passed the test after an initial failure did so because they were repaired. In fact, in many cases, drivers simply returned later, without doing any repairs, and the car passed because of natural variability in emissions levels. At least one study estimated this occurs in up to 75 percent of cases involving a failed vehicle.

• Overpredicted carbon-monoxide emissions from cars by assuming their emission-control systems frequently failed. In fact, research has found the systems hold up well over the years, meaning the cars weren't spewing as much pollution as models anticipated. That, in turn, means the program can't be credited for shaving as much pollution, since the assumptions were excessive in the first place.

In more recent years, the claims of pollution gains have waned as cars pollute less. Even faulty computer models and other estimates now take into account the far cleaner fleet that is traveling local roads and highways.

The most current audit of the program, analyzing data from 2000 and 2001, estimates the program made a 16 percent dent in carbon monoxide and 19 percent cut in smog-forming hydrocarbons.

But even that audit contains caveats suggesting those figures are inflated. And critics say it, too, includes bad assumptions, similar to those above.

While health department officials spent years trying to defend the bloated claims, its current executive director agrees with longtime critics that nailing down the program's benefit was - and still is - a slippery task.

"I will concede that there are wildly fluctuating values placed upon the effectiveness of this program," said Doug Benevento, the executive director who took over the health department in 2003.

He noted a study in 2002 by a governor-appointed air-quality board that pegged the impact of the program at anywhere from 10 to 34 percent. That range, he said, does little to help the agency focus on how best to cut pollution.

"Frankly, from my standpoint, diminishing the size of this program and the reach of this program is really a top priority," Benevento said.

Among the first studies to raise serious questions about the program was one conducted in 1995 and 1996 by University of Denver chemistry professor Donald Stedman. He and his colleagues set up a remote sensor near Interstate 25 and Sixth Avenue and recorded emissions from about 23,000 cars.

Roughly half had been through an emissions check in the program's first year (1995) and about half had not. His findings: an average emissions improvement of just 4 to 8 percent for those cars that had passed the emissions test.

What many agree to be the most comprehensive report came in 2001, when a committee of the National Research Council - an arm of the National Academy of Science - examined emissions-testing programs in Colorado and elsewhere. The 12-member committee included two experts from the Denver area. One was Stedman.

Among its findings: Computer models were "grossly" inflating the program's effectiveness.

"Independent and state-sponsored evaluations of ongoing (emissions test) programs have estimated that the emissions reductions attributable to these programs are from zero to one-half of the reductions predicted by (computer) models," the report said.

In Denver, that means the program cut carbon-monoxide levels from zero to 15 percent. The NRC report recommended better methods of evaluating the effectiveness of the programs and a shift toward testing that flags the dirtiest cars and leaves the vast majority of drivers alone.

Another local panel member, Doug Lawson of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said the emissions-testing program has managed to survive for nearly a decade without any "real world" data supporting the conclusions of computer models.

In other words, no actual tests of the air, nor of cars' individual emissions, prove the program's effectiveness.

"Every analysis that's been done shows the model gives you more credit than what we observe in the real world," Lawson said.

But gathering real-world data is tricky. Perhaps the most effective test would be to screen vehicle emissions in a region with a testing program and vehicles in an area without one, and look to see how much cleaner the emissions are in the region with a testing program.

In the words of the NRC report, attempting to do so "is confounded by differences between the (areas) in climate, socioeconomic conditions and other characteristics.

Additionally, vehicle technologies are also continuing to improve, so the emissions benefits of a program depend on when they are being measured."

Even assuming the testing program aids the air quality - and even longtime critics concede there is probably a small benefit from it - the impact is dwindling by the year as cleaner-burning cars are making a far greater impact.

According to the latest audit, average carbon-monoxide emissions from cars decreased by 50 percent in the Denver area between 1996 and 2002, a reduction in pollution that dwarfs even the most optimistic estimates of the benefit of the emissions-testing program.

"The real difference over the past eight years - and really over the past 10 to 15 years - is technology has surpassed the ability of cars to pollute," said the health department's Benevento. "Cars are running cleaner and staying cleaner long - and that has made the biggest difference."

A cleaner and cleaner fleet means fewer and fewer cars are failing their emissions tests, even as officials have tightened up the testing standards slightly over the years.

Indeed, the test always has been a hassle for the majority of drivers whose cars pass easily. In fact, last year in the metro area just 7 percent of cars failed the test, meaning 93 percent had to endure the process simply to prove their innocence.

"You test too many cars to find a few dirty ones," said Gallagher, who agrees with critics who say the program needs to move toward a "dirty screen" technique, in which only the high-emitting vehicles are flagged for repairs by roadside devices, and all others are left alone.

Health officials say they are moving in that direction with the new so-called Rapid Screen approach. That method, which debuted this fall, uses drive-by emissions screening to sort out the cars that don't need a full-scale emissions test and sends the owners a postcard notifying them they don't need one.

But shifting from that method to a dirty screen that only picks out and pursues the dirtiest cars and lets all others pass is plagued with hurdles.

Among them: the potential political resistance to pulling over such cars at roadside checkpoints; the fact that most of the dirtiest cars are also older cars and are more likely to be owned by low-income and minority drivers; the fact that dirty-car drivers would have every incentive to try and avoid passing by a remote sensing device; and the difficulty of funding for the program if the vast majority of drivers no longer had to pay the fee of $24.25 every two years.

Not everyone bashes the centralized testing program. The EPA, while acknowledging some flaws in the computer models that measure the program, believes the emission tests have paid clean-air dividends, even if not as large as some have suggested.

"There still is benefit to the program, to the extent that you're getting to a number of (high-emitting) cars and getting them repaired," said Richard Long, head of air and radiation programs for the regional office of the EPA.

The company that owns Envirotest - Environmental Systems Products, or ESP - acknowledges that there's extensive debate over the benefits of the program, but believes the tests have provided a cost-effective strategy for fighting pollution.

"Just from a very basic standpoint, the EPA and, for that matter, most states that have to wrestle with the problem of air quality, principally all of them have chose to do these (emissions testing) programs," said Michael Kozlowski, senior vice president of ESP.

Chemistry professor Stedman, perhaps the program's harshest critic, agrees that the program probably did some good at the margins.

"There isn't a shadow of doubt that programs like that clean the air," Stedman said. "Now, might there have been better ways to clean the air for $40 million a year from the citizens of Colorado?"

The solution, Stedman said, is a program focusing on the dirtiest cars, one he thinks would be easy to set up if state officials and politicians had the will to do so.

Gallagher, the former supervisor of mobile emissions sources for the health department, agrees. He said he wishes the program could have been more efficient from the start.

"If someone had built a better mousetrap," he said, "I would have jumped on it in a heartbeat."

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2465222,00.html

$715 Amount someone must spend in attempting to repair emissions problems before getting a waiver allowing them to register the car

$267 Average amount spent that year to repair a vehicle failing the emission test

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2464763,00.html

Emissions tests may shift focus to smog; Carbon monoxide levels fall, but now ozone is a concern

Colorado health officials say they're eager to cut back, even eliminate, emissions testing for cars as carbon monoxide pollution plunges.

That's because of a new struggle against smog, an irritating pall in the air not related to carbon monoxide, but to other chemicals pouring from the tailpipe.

This summer, the Denver region violated Environmental Protection Agency health limits for smog - also called ground-level ozone. That setback sent local regulators scrambling for ways to cut down on the pollutant.

One potential solution: shift the focus of tailpipe testing from carbon monoxide to hydrocarbons, which contribute to ozone. Cars failing to meet certain limits for the ozone-forming compounds couldn't renew their registration until they passed the test.

"There's a strong chance the program is going to shift and be a more important ozone (control) strategy," said Christopher Dann, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Such a move, he said, "could contribute to the life span of the program.

"If it were simply a carbon monoxide program, we'd be near the very end," Dann said. "Given our new ozone situation, that could potentially extend the life of emissions testing."

Key to that debate would be what other ozone-cutting strategies might come to bear. Officials acknowledge that using emissions tests to cut ozone might not be a big hit with the public if industrial sources of ozone were left off the hook.

The advantage to using emissions testing to lower ozone is cost, said Michael Kozlowski, senior vice president of Environmental Systems Products, which operates the emissions testing program in Denver.

It's cheaper, he said, to run such a program than to add emissions controls to industry - equipment that can cost in the tens of millions of dollars at each facility.

The metro area's vehicle emissions tests cost the public about $44 million a year, according to the most recent audit of the program.

"Ultimately, every state has to make a decision as to how they want to improve their air quality," Kozlowski said.

Colorado health officials haven't made any final decisions on just how to cut rising smog levels, or whether car emissions will be targeted. But local regulators must submit a proposal to EPA on the matter next year.

What a waste, eh? I suspect that the indoctrination value of these programs is the biggest attraction to the so-called environmentalists.

The socialists' plan was to make cars so unaffordable, coupled with sky-high taxation upon income, to force Americans to take gov't subsidized mass transit.

It was all about enslaving a nation...

If the air could be confined to that mass above Colorado, even then it's not likely the testing would produce the results desired by those who fail to grasp the enormous complexity of the natural world and the forces affecting it.

Without allowing for transport, one could gather data from vehicle tailpipes all one wants and the predominant results would be, a) buzzes for the testers, b) feel-goodies for the greens (also see "a"), and c) a waste of the people's money to fund the program.

This is pseudo-science, at best, and more akin to the letting of blood by dark ages barbers.

In a rare show of good sense, Minnesota trash binned it's emissions testing program a few years ago. Not even the greenys shed a tear for it, that's what a fraud it was.

I'm convinced that 90% of bureaucrats are democrats. They get up in the morning and say: "How can we waste money, harrass hard working people and act like lunatics."

Rights, farms, environment ping.

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