California passed regulations that will phase-out older, dirtier diesel engines from its roads and industrial areas by 2023.
Now Oregon is considering similar regulations -- not necessarily because the state is an environmental leader, but because it’s at risk of becoming a dumping ground for all those engines that next-door-neighbor California doesn’t want.
The House Health Committee heard a bill last week that seeks to catch Oregon up to California’s stronger environmental laws.
House Bill 3310 gives the state’s Environmental Quality Commission until 2020 to develop a plan for phasing out dirty diesel engines for trucks, off-road engines and port equipment, using existing California standards as a guide. The law would not cover train locomotives or boats.
“In Oregon, we like to think we have clean air,” said Mary Peveto of Neighbors for Clean Air. “Oregon is currently the 6th-worst state for air pollution in the United States.”
One big culprit in Oregon’s dirty air is diesel exhaust. Engines manufactured after 2007 are very clean, thanks to pollution controls that filter out the soot and toxins before they leave the tailpipe. But diesel engines can last for decades, leaving many of these older engines on the road for years to come.
“We can essentially breathe the exhaust from [the new] diesel engines -- that’s how clean they are,” said Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, the sponsor of HB 3310. “The question is whether we want to ban the old diesel engines. It’s clean versus old.”
The House Health Committee debated whether its air quality focus should just focus on diesel when there are many other sources of air pollution, such as wood smoke. Diesel is not just bad because of the particulate matter but because of the many chemicals in the exhaust, according to John Krallman of Neighbors for Clean Air.
Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem, said that the state had already addressed the problem of wood stoves, requiring uncertified wood stoves to be removed from homes before they can be sold.
HB 3310 faces considerable opposition both from the private industries that depend on diesel truck engines and from some county government officials, who insist that forcing them to stop using dirty truck and bus engines constitutes an unfunded mandate foisted upon their cash-strapped budgets.
Jay Bozievich, the conservative chairman of the Lane County Commission, said trading in old trucks for clean ones would force the county to scale back road maintenance even further, creating a public safety hazard.
Greenlick questioned Bozievich on whether Lane County could track that public safety hazard and weigh it against the public health hazard caused by diesel pollution.
According to the National Resources Defence Council, the California environmental standards will prevent upwards of 8,000 deaths from diesel air pollution by 2020.
The trucking industry has unsurprisingly fought California’s standards, but Bob Russell, the lobbyist for the Oregon Trucking Association, argued that at least California’s regulations came with a carrot and not just a stick -- the Golden State has offered hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives as it phases out the dirty diesel engines.
He said Oregon had not done nearly as much to provide incentives for the phase-out of the older engines, leaving the cost of HB 3310 and the clean trucks to be borne solely by the industry. Russell supported a measure in 2007 that directed the Oregon Department of Transportation to spend $500,000 in federal grants through “clean diesel fund” that would help truckers retrofit or destroy the older engines -- a small-model “cash for clunkers” program similar to what the federal government did during the recession to get rid of gas guzzlers.
But Russell said ODOT never spent the money, and no new money was ever added to the program.
“It’s taken longer than it should have to allocate these funds,” conceded ODOT spokesman Don Hamilton, but the money was finally being spent to retrofit or replace 17 diesel engines. About two-thirds of the money -- $368,000 -- will go to Fred Meyer, giving the grocer a down payment on its plans to replace nine diesel truck engines with natural gas engines at a cost of $1.5 million.
The remaining money will be allocated to the John Residential Construction Group, which operates in northwest Portland -- an area particularly challenged by air pollution from its location abutting two freeways and the industrial waterfront.
According to The Oregonian, another $7 million, largely from federal sources, has passed through the Department of Environmental Quality, taking 724 older diesel trucks out of commission -- still a drop in the bucket compared to the 145,000 old diesel trucks on the road.
Jim Geisinger of the Associated Oregon Loggers argued that off-road diesel engines used in the logging industry should be exempted because the diesel air pollution problem is in urbanized areas and not the remote forest locations where his members work.
Rep. Cedric Hayden, R-Cottage Grove, said he had first-hand experience in the logging industry and that an important piece of equipment -- the yarder -- has not even been manufactured since 2006, and the proposed bill would effectively force all yarders to be retrofitted.
Greenlick indicated the bill will likely move out of the Health Committee, but then end up in the House Energy and Environment Committee, chaired by Rep. Jessica Vega Pederson, D-Portland. Whether it passes out of that committee may depend upon how much a priority Greenlick and co-sponsoring Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, want to make it this session.
