THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 4, 1994 TAG: 9406040009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By Jeffrey E. Locke
DATELINE: 940604 LENGTH: Medium
Auto enthusiasts in this area are as concerned as other groups about maintaining clean-air ``standards.'' We live here and breathe the air too.
{REST} But what are the ``standards?'' After the EPA's announcement that this area had improved by 21 percent since 1983, the agency now wants to downgrade our area's air-quality rating from ``marginal'' (according to its own 1991 Clean Air Act standards) to ``moderate,'' thus giving it the ``right'' to further regulate our area by, among other measures, potentially requiring vehicle-emissions inspections every two years.
These inspections will cause financial distress to the mom-and-pop service stations that will be forced out of the vehicle-inspection business because they cannot afford the sophisticated equipment necessary, and will increase jobs at the EPA (i.e., bureaucracy) while being unnecessary for continued air-quality improvement.
The standards haven't changed; only the EPA's interpretation of these standards has changed. How can Virginians be penalized by the EPA when we have improved our air quality, and will continue to improve it, to a quality exceeding the 1991 standards for a ``satisfactory'' air-quality rating?
More than one state legislator has told me that, by itself, the natural attrition of pre-1981 vehicles from the highways will be enough to improve our area's air-quality rating to ``satisfactory'' (according to the EPA's 1991 Clean Air Act standards) by the next target date of 1996.
Additionally, Virginia has on the books a ``klunker bill,'' passed in July 1993, for the voluntary retirement of pre-1981 vehicles. Administered properly, it will further reduce emissions by motor vehicles through a program that will offer financial incentives to owners to retire pre-1981 vehicles. I serve on the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality's ad-hoc committee to help draft policies and procedures for the implementation of this regulation.
Beyond that, the CCCHR and ODMA are about to present to the Department of Motor Vehicles recommendations that will limit accidental and purposeful violations of Virginia's vehicle-registration laws to further reduce road miles and air pollution by vehicles 25 years of age and older.
With the natural flow of the world's winds being west to east, Virginia receives unwelcome pollution emissions from those states west of us; particularly the industrial and mining states of the midwest. Have you ever seen a factory or utility belching pollution from a smokestack? How much pollution is in our air from unclean factories and mines in states west of us?
Considering this wind flow and because the natural attrition of pre-1981 vehicles will improve our air-quality rating to ``satisfactory,'' and with the ``klunker bill'' and other measures to further improve our air quality, etc., if the EPA really wants to improve Virginia's air quality it can start to the west of us by cleaning up the fixed-base industrial polluters.
The EPA may be needed in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania to go after the larger industrial polluters, but we Virginians can take care of our own air quality and vehicle emmissions without the agency's ``help.''
I agree with your editorial that overregulation of Virginians by the EPA sounds a lot more like building a power base and job preservation by the EPA than anything else.
by CNB