EPA Targeting Light Trucks,
SUV’s For More Regulations

WASHINGTON — Stockmen may want to start pondering how they’re going to pull a gooseneck trailer with one of the new Volkswagen "Bugs."

Continuing Vice President Al Gore’s assault on private automobiles, particularly the demonization of light trucks and "sport utility vehicles," the Clinton administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is threatening to tighten vehicle emissions standards. EPA is drawing a tight bead in particular on vehicles larger than "conventional" cars.

The agency laid the groundwork for tighter standards last week by citing a so-called "study" that questions whether air quality goals can be achieved without requiring still cleaner automobiles.

The report, expected to be made public in coming weeks, will play a critical role as the EPA develops new tailpipe emission requirements for the next decade for cars, including the popular sport utility vehicles.

Predictably, the "study" suggests it may be difficult to meet federal standards for ozone and other pollutants without additional reductions in tailpipe emissions beyond what the auto industry already is promising, government and private sources say.

This is in part because of expected growth in the number of automobiles and miles traveled as well as the continuing popularity of light trucks and sport utility vehicles, many of which have larger engines than dangerously downsized "conventional" passenger cars.

Auto manufacturers recently announced they will introduce cleaner burning vehicles beginning with 1999 models, phasing them in over several years. But environmental activists and regulators contend EPA should go further.

The EPA report, which the White House is reviewing, is expected to provide rationalization for the agency as it determines what additional auto emission controls it may impose, industry and air pollution control experts said.

Richard Wilson, the EPA's assistant administrator for air and radiation, declined to characterize details of the study Friday, but said it "lays out the various issues that EPA must consider" in developing new tailpipe emission requirements.

"The study reaches no regulatory conclusions regarding the level at which future standards should be set," Wilson said in a statement.

The report, couched in terms of options and general scenarios, prophesies that technologies will be available in 2004 for additional emission reductions and that such improvements can expect to be cost-effective, even when compared with pollution reductions from other sources such as industry and power plants.

"It starts the debate on what kind of cars we're going to be driving in the next decade," said Nancy Kruger of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators association. The group is made up of bureaucrats with a vested interest in more regulation, hence larger staffs and bigger budgets.

"There's going to be a big fight over it," Kruger predicted.

EPA plans to issue proposed regulation on so-called "Tier II" emission standards by the end of the year, with a final rule by the end of 1999.

The auto industry says it is moving on its own beginning with 1999 models to produce cleaner cars — so-called "low emissions vehicles" — nationally. These cars are supposed to emit 50 percent to 70 percent less smog-causing pollution than cars now generally being sold. Ford Motor Co. announced in January that even its large sport utility vehicles would be low-emission next year.

The industry's position is that the planned low emission vehicles should satisfy the EPA's next round of emission reductions, said Bob Babik, director of environmental issues at the American Automobile Manufacturers Association.

"We think its a good level. If EPA comes out and says there's more needed, we'll have to evaluate that," he said in an interview.

But environmental activists and many air quality regulators contend that by 2004, new technologies will allow for even tougher emission controls, and that the EPA should require what's feasible.

Last week, the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and its local counterpart formally urged the EPA to look beyond the industry's voluntary clean car program in crafting its Tier II emissions requirements.

The new standard should "reflect new and emerging technologies ... expected to be available in 2004 and beyond" and also require sport utility vehicles and light trucks to meet the same emission standards as passenger cars, the two groups said.

"There's a clear need for the EPA to set more stringent emissions standards for cars and light trucks" as part of its upcoming regulation, agreed Roland Wong, a transportation specialist for the Union of Concerned Scientists. He said the EPA study is expected to support that conclusion.

(Of course it will "support that conclusion." That’s why they wrote it — Ed.)