CA: Judge says SoCal smog agency may enforce rules on public fleets

Bakersfield Californian ^ | 5/9/05 | AP - Los Angeles

[NormsRevenge]

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal judge has ruled that a Southern California clean-air agency may impose its anti-smog rules on state and local public fleet vehicles.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the South Coast Air Quality Management District could not enforce rules requiring private fleets to use engines that burn cleaner fuels. The high court sent the case to a lower court to determine whether the regulations could be applied to public fleets.

"The court has concluded that the fleet rules are constitutional as applied to state and local governments," U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote in a 24-page decision dated May 6.

"This is a major victory for the AQMD," agency spokesman Sam Atwood said Monday. "This will allow us to move forward with the fleet rules to remove pollutants from diesel vehicles."

The AQMD believes that under Cooper's decision the rules apply to private fleets operating under government contract, even though the judge did not address that question, Atwood said.

The standards were imposed in 2000 by the AQMD, which regulates air quality in all or major parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties.

Aimed at reducing diesel exhaust, a major source of toxic air pollution and oxides of nitrogen that lead to asthma-inducing smog, the rules required private and public operators to buy cleaner-burning models when they replace or add vehicles to their fleets.

Two industry groups, the Engine Manufacturers Association and the Western States Petroleum Association, sued the AQMD in U.S. District Court. But the clean-air agency won in that court and in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Last year, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which sided with the plaintiffs, who claimed that local pollution rules were at odds with national standards under the federal Clean Air Act.

The Justice Department supported the oil companies and diesel engine manufacturers and filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that municipalities can't establish their own anti-pollution rules for new vehicles without first getting permission from federal environmental officials.

A spokesman for the Engine Manufacturers Association, Joe Suchecki, said the group disagreed with the latest court ruling and was considering an appeal.

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On the Net:

South Coast Air Quality Management District: http://www.aqmd.gov

Engine Manufacturers Association: http://www.enginemanufacturers.org

[seastay]

Does anybody think this law will be applied to Mexican companies sending large fleets north as allowed by supreme court's mandate through the North American Free Trade Agreement ? Or is this another stick in the eye to legal citizens only?

It has been has estimated up to 34,000 Mexican trucks a year will enter the country under the NAFTA policy.

One study predicted that Mexican trucks could add 50 tons per day of smog-forming emissions -- more than pollution generated by the region's 350 biggest industrial sources combined.

Some environmentalists estimate that by 2010, Mexican trucks will emit twice as much air pollution as U.S. models.


Trucks' impact on air feared
Saturday, June 26, 2004 - 7:12:58 AM PST
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2237167,00.html