Posted on 04/12/2006 10:30:07 AM PDT by radar101
Several local residents have written letters recently taking issue with the federal and local governments' assistance in retrofitting Mexican diesel trucks traveling in the United States with pollution control devices.
The assistance comes in response to a Bush administration policy announced in 2002 and confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2004 that for the first time will allow commercial trucks from Mexico to cross the border and travel throughout the United States. Mexican trucks are currently allowed to cross and operate within the border commercial zone, roughly 25 miles within the United States.
The North American Free Trade Agreement paved the way for Mexican trucks to enter the United States more broadly. With the prospect of more trucks from Mexico regularly traveling across our borders, environmental regulators began looking for ways to reduce air pollution from these vehicles.
Fortunately, diesel emissions are an easy emission reduction target: for relatively little money and resources, we are able to make great strides in protecting public health. Diesel exhaust exacerbates respiratory conditions. Children and the elderly are generally at greatest risk and suffer from the effects of asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer and other chronic health conditions.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its partners throughout the country are pursuing the diesel issue in two ways: through tighter fuel standards and stricter engine standards.
Efforts such as the National Clean Diesel Campaign and the West Coast Collaborative are accelerating the pace of environmental protection by turning over fleets sooner. These actions take advantage of cleaner burning fuels and new technologies, including engine replacement and retrofit technology. That is why we have been working in partnership with the San Diego Air Pollution Control District to retrofit older diesel engines with technology that will reduce diesel pollution from older vehicles crossing the border.
Mexico, in turn, has made some very promising commitments in the last couple of years in stepping up efforts to reduce its own sources of diesel pollution. Mexico did the right thing last year when the government committed to making ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel commercially available in its border states. Mexico has also proposed more stringent diesel engine standards for its new trucks that will reduce emissions.
We share the air along the U.S.-Mexico border. Reducing diesel pollution and improving air quality needs to be a shared effort as well. Dirty air does not respect borders, and respiratory health affects are a shared challenge. Improving our shared air corridors improves the quality of life for Americans and Mexicans alike.
WAYNE NASTRI
Regional Administrator
U.S. EPA Pacific Southwest
San Diego
Don't be so harsh. Those Mexican trucks are just doing the polluting that American trucks won't do.
There is no justification for tax payer money to pay for that, Mexicans should be paying for their own retro-fiting (and let Americans do the work). ALL Americans have paid for their own pollution controls.
" Dirty air does not respect borders, and respiratory health affects are a shared challenge. Improving our shared air corridors improves the quality of life for Americans and Mexicans alike."
Not even dirty air has any respect for our borders. George stays up late every night thinking up ways to make life better for his messican friends.
Also helping the transportation industry supress American wages for persons who drive trucks.
One of the big money backers for the amnesty is the transportation industry. Once amnesty is given millions of people will be able to get commercial driving licenses. If anyone here is a trucker and think you can continue to support a family or lifestyle on your work anymore, you're woefully wrong.
Notice Mexico "promises." That's all it has to do. Bush doesn't think in the National interest of its people as a whole, just certain upper classes profit margins.
Of course the Democrats do too. The MSM dregs every possible conclusion to Bush policies to corporate backers (Halliburton!). Here on the Senate immigration bill there is absolute silence.
"Not even dirty air has any respect for our borders. George stays up late every night thinking up ways to make life better for his messican friends."
And the American ones who squeeze more profit from these policies.
As I indicated before, the MSM, except for Lou Dobbs, is utterly silent about who is the money behind these proposals. The industries front and fund some ethnic looking protests and commentators and the MSM does nothing to examine why they're spending so much money on lobbyists, promises to fund presidential campaigns, and so on. They wouldn't spend a dime out of "kindness" they are seeking to increase profits. The American standard of living is an excessive cost in the wage column, per the Corporate-Liberal globalist view. What wage costs can't be reduced by outsourcing overseas will be reduced by insourcing illegals and others to inflate the labor supply. From the corporate short term view is looks good by increasing profits. But it's atrocious macroeconomically, morally and nationally.
I don't think many Dems think so far about hypothetical future voters, they have no policies except there own immediate self-interest. I do think they have a touchy view of themselves and very much fear a mere allegation of "racism". So the lobbies and their money affirmed that fear, Bush/Rove helping by implying opponents are racists, and auctioning off the lower and middle classes of this country become a feel-good proposition.
Amnnesty for Mexican diesels...they are as American as Detroit,Cummins or Cat...
Lots of them!
First off, it's not physically possible to "retrofit" most heavy trucks to meet current U.S. emissions standards without replacing the engine, installing an engine control computer, rewiring the truck to work with that computer, and installing a catalytic converter/muffler.
Because of the wasted fuel, a larger radiator and faster-turning fan are also required.
You're talking about a bill upwards of $25,000 for parts alone!
In the meantime, U.S. truck makers are working frantically to build a truck that will meet the new 2007 emissions standards - and these trucks will run ONLY on low-sulphur fuel, and at a fuel economy penalty nearing 10%
Can you save "fuel shortage"?
just another aspect of Bush's sell out America policy.
No borders, no language, no culture as Mike Savage would say = NO COUNTRY! Absolutely shameless, this Bush guy and I thought no one could come close to matching Clinton's level of treason.
"Children and the elderly are generally at greatest risk.."
Foolproof money winner!
Diesel exhaust exacerbates respiratory conditions.
Fine particulates CAN exacerbate a respiratory condition, but then asthma can also result from air that it TOO clean (due to the lack of environmental insults in childhood resulting in an underdeveloped immune system).
I would bet that a large fraction of the asthma cases out there resulted from two causes:
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