Posted on 01/02/2003 3:34:24 PM PST by John Jamieson
Bush Administration Planning to Extend Cuts of Diesel Emissions By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
ASHINGTON, Dec. 30 — In an effort to reduce a dangerous source of air pollution, the Bush administration is devising rules that would sharply cut diesel pollutants from construction vehicles, certain farming and mining equipment and other off-road vehicles.
Environmental groups are hopeful that the standards, which may not take full effect for almost a decade, will continue the administration's stance against health hazards caused by diesel engines.
Those policies, which include strong support of a Clinton administration plan to cut pollutants from trucks, buses and other diesel-powered highway vehicles, have drawn praise even from environmentalists who criticize the Bush administration for its stance on other air-quality issues.
Government officials said the plan would prevent more than 8,000 premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of respiratory illnesses every year. A similar plan already in place to cut pollutants from trucks and buses by 2007 is expected to save 8,300 lives annually.
The rules for off-road vehicles, which are being written by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Management and Budget, are expected to be proposed by April and completed within about a year, after a public-comment period. Details of the deliberations were reported today by The Washington Post.
According to officials at the environmental agency, the new rules would probably force refiners to cut the sulfur content of diesel fuel for bulldozers, tractors and other off-road vehicles to 15 parts per million, down from current levels of as much as 3,400 parts.
The rules would also require makers of diesel engines to reduce sharply the amount of particulate, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants produced by the engines they sell. Administration officials said the cuts for most vehicles would eventually come to more than 95 percent — in line, they said, with those the truck and bus plan calls for.
Administration officials, though, are still debating the timing of the new plan and are also likely to allow engine makers to delay emissions cuts on some vehicles if they make reductions in others. Federal officials said that this proposal would not lessen the beneficial impact to the environment, but environmental groups were concerned that a plan for trading emissions could undermine the requirements.
Jeff Holmstead, the E.P.A.'s assistant administrator for air and radiation, said that officials were debating two approaches on the plan's timing. The first would require refiners to reduce the sulfur content to 15 p.p.m. by 2007. The second is a "two step" approach that would call for a reduction to 500 p.p.m. by 2007, then a further reduction to 15 p.p.m. by 2010.
"At this point, we are leaning toward the two-step approach," Mr. Holmstead said.
The timing of rules that require cleaner-burning engines would be tied to the introduction of cleaner fuel, administration officials said, since fuel with high sulfur content can easily foul new pollution-control devices.
While it would be "theoretically possible" to use a trading plan to weaken the new emission standards, Mr. Holmstead said, the E.P.A. administrator, Christie Whitman, "has been very clear that's not what we're going to do with the rule."
In addition to the health benefits, Mr. Holmstead said the new rule would save "tens of billions of dollars" in lower health care costs and reduced employee sick days.
John Walke, director of the clean-air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the administration's plan, based on its track record defending restrictions on diesel pollutants.
But Mr. Walke said he was concerned that the trading plan could weaken the rules already in place, which were first proposed by the Clinton administration, for emissions cuts from diesel trucks and buses by 2007.
Mr. Walke, who called the Bush administration's diesel-pollutants policy "the one bright light among a thousand points of darkness" on air-quality issues, also said he was concerned about what he called the highly unusual involvement of the White House — through the O.M.B. — in making the rule.
"There's still a big question over the direction they are planning to take with this farm and construction-equipment rule," he said.
Allen Schaeffer, the executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum, a group representing refiners and makers of diesel engines and pollution control devices, predicted that the industry would be able to meet whatever rules the administration set out.
"This new round of emissions standards is clearly another challenge," he said, "but one I think industry is working on with the agency and is prepared to meet."
But battles remained on some crucial issues, he said. "The most contentious issue deals with the stringency of the standards and the time frame," he said. "The new rules will present challenges for manufacturers and fuel refiners alike."
Other thoughts?
How does Gas and Diesel fuel differ? Are the flashpoint's different or something? Does it have to do with the way it's refined?
Yeah! What a bunch of poppycock! The diesel engine is the least of the polluters. The environazis just play on the ignorance of the populace and get their way just to make life more miserable and expensive for everyone.
Yup! Runs on 200 - 800% excess air, needs no after air injection, catalytic converters, special injection and all that garbage. They took an old 1938 diesel Caterpillar tractor engine out of a museum and fired it up and it beat every engine emission criteria in effect without any add-ons. Wish I had kept the numbers for you.
It was so good that it attracted the attention of the enviro-nazis who had to drum up an entirely new set of criteria to use to judge it. Pretty soon, I expect them to outlaw any flame over a certain temperature if they can't shut down society any other way.
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