
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 19, 1992                   TAG: 9203190154
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

`CASH FOR CLUNKERS' PROGRAM APPROVED

Taking its cue from a successful California project, the Bush administration said Wednesday that it would allow businesses and industries to avoid expensive pollution-control measures by buying and junking perhaps millions of smog-spewing old cars.

The Environmental Protection Agency will issue guidelines within a month encouraging states to adopt voluntary programs in which industrial polluters would receive credits for retiring old cars that emit the highest levels of pollution. The companies could use the credits to meet their requirements to reduce emissions under the 1990 federal Clean Air Act.

The plan would enable businesses and industries to save millions of dollars by buying the "clunkers" rather than installing costly, high-tech equipment to abate emissions from their smokestacks.

Administration officials said the program would protect the environment while helping private enterprise. But environmentalists were skeptical.

Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program, called the proposal "the ultimate junk bond," claiming that although the cars no longer are polluting the air, the industries that removed them are.

EPA studies estimate that cars manufactured before 1980 are responsible for 86 percent of the carbon monoxide and organic compound pollution by automobiles. Six percent of the cars in use account for fully half of the hydrocarbons poured into the atmosphere from tailpipes, said assistant EPA administrator Richard Morgenstern.

As part of the initiative rolled out at a White House briefing, the EPA will develop what amounts to a "blue book" of high-polluting cars. Each model manufactured before 1980 will be assigned a number of credits based on its emissions and its expected lifetime.

Industries buying such cars could deduct the expected pollution in the remaining life of the cars from the abatement requirements imposed on the companies by the Clean Air Act.

The plan for taking heavily polluting cars off the road apparently was inspired by a 1991 program in which Unocal paid $700 each for several thousand pre-1971 clunkers as part of a $10 million environmental initiative in several California counties.

The EPA will require that the cars have been licensed and insured in the previous year to prevent vehicles already junked from being turned in for payment.

by CNB