California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

By Sean Edgar, CleanFleets.net

CARB staff is on a collision course with its Board and open government laws as it continues to stumble down the path of relaxing the Off-road and Truck and Bus Rules. At its December 2009 meeting the Board committed to making changes to the Rules and in reference to the Tran Report Chairman Nichols stated, “We’ve agree to redo the report.” Fast forward eight months and neither direction has been completed. This column will concentrate on the rule change process as the Executive Director Report closely covers the battle over the science.

To recap the rule change process, CARB staff released some new concepts in both April and June. There were no changes proposed to the Small Fleet schedule, which provided a three year delay until December 31, 2013. Fleets of four or more were allowed a slower schedule than that which became law on January 8, 2010. Staff proposed some early retrofit credit provisions and a 15,000 annual mileage threshold, below which a truck with a filter (diesel particulate filter or DPF) installed, could delay replacement until 2021. The long awaited “final” proposal that staff plans to take to hearing has been bogged down by the process to arrive at the revised emissions inventory that will be used to modify the Rules.

The following detail was provided by CARB staff on August 30, 2010 relating to the future public workshops, August 31 through September 9, 2010.
About a solid three hours of CARB staff presenting both the Off-road and Truck Rule inventories. The agenda for these inventory workshops is posted on the CARB website at:
www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/onrdiesel/onrdiesel.htm. The content of the workshops included CARB staff admitting their prior emissions estimates were significantly inflated. Their new math indicates that the combined off-road and on-road emissions are lower than anticipated. This provides a margin for regulatory relief which they estimate at:  
•    South Coast (2014): 61 tons/day NOx Equivalent and,
•    San Joaquin Valley (2014): 40 tons/day NOx Equivalent.  
Thus the Rule time line that was developed statewide, to a large degree to suit these areas of the state now can be reduced. The Truck Rule emissions are being recalculated based on age and mileage.

The Off-road Rule emissions inventory comparison of today versus the 2006-07 work by CARB staff is summarized as:  
How staff translates its own findings that were summarized above will be the subject of late September or early October workshops. Notice of these rule change workshops including the date and time will be posted with the times and dates at the link above.
The revised schedule heading to the CARB hearing on changes is:
•    October 25, 2010: Last day for draft Rules to be posted to meet the December hearing date
•    December 9 and 10, 2010: Public hearing scheduled date at Sacramento.
We will continue to provide updates as conditions change.  
You may direct questions to me at (916) 718-7050.

Clarification: two months ago, we may have implied in Sean’s article that clean truck engines were “only those engines manufactured in 1993 or earlier”. This is not correct, because many older mechanical diesel engines when maintained and operated properly, are very clean and test in the single digit range during PSIP tests. These low test readings mean these (mechanical) diesel engines are truly very clean considering their age and the technology that they utilized, all approved by EPA. CDTOA has taken an official position that all diesel engines regardless of age are not going to be negotiated with, relating to any existing or future CARB diesel engine regulation. Further, CDTOA is committed to exposing the “junk science” behind CARB’s health effect claims (premature & cancer deaths) associated with diesel generated PM2.5.