State smog test leaves polluters on the road < Previous page

More than a dozen studies have shown that the device can reliably scan hundreds of cars and pick out the handful with emissions that greatly exceed legal limits.

Yet regulators at the state air board and federal Environmental Protection Agency have a long history of resisting proposals to use Stedman's "remote sensing" or similar technology to tackle the challenge of tracking down gross polluters between Smog Checks.

The latest state air board study concluded that remote sensors were good at spotting high-polluting vehicles but would cost too much to be a worthwhile addition to the Smog Check program.

Critics immediately attacked.

The Inspection and Maintenance Review Committee -- a panel of outside experts set up by the Legislature to monitor the Smog Check program -- said that the study may have inflated remote sensing's costs by assuming, for example, that such a program would need three full-time attorneys. It also said the study glossed over Smog Check's shortcomings.

"When 40% of vehicles [that are] failed and then repaired are found failing again in roadside tests, and when 20% of vehicles passed in stations are failing on roadsides, it appears that Smog Check has some very serious problems and that existing tools and programs aren't solving the problem," the panel wrote.

The committee's executive director, Rocky Carlisle, said the panel is waiting for an air board analysis to explain why 40% of repaired vehicles fail again.

One of Carlisle's predecessors, Joel Schwartz, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the new study began with the false assumption that Smog Check was working well and that the only role for remote sensing would be to catch a handful of vehicles that evade it.

He termed it "a perfect example of how regulatory agencies can get the answer they want by crafting the questions carefully. ... The way they frame the question is, 'How cost-effective is it to have remote sensing pick up the few crumbs that are missed by Smog Check?' Well, of course it's not going to be cost-effective."

One reason Smog Check's support is so entrenched may lie in the odd workings of the main federal air pollution law.

Complying with that law, the Clean Air Act, is a primary purpose of both the state and the Valley's air district. It may be even more important than actually reducing smog because failing to comply with the law can jeopardize federal highway funding and severely restrict business expansion.

Here's how it works: The law requires states and air pollution districts to write plans showing how they will cut pollution. Those plans contain long lists of control measures, with a tally of the gains expected from each.

But here's the catch: The measures have to be not just feasible, but they also have to be acceptable to the EPA, which oversees Clean Air Act compliance. To be acceptable, a measure typically needs a long track record, from which expected emission reductions can be calculated. Measures that EPA officials have not approved, for whatever reason, do not count toward meeting the district's target. A local agency could adopt them anyway, but it would not get credit for them. So it has scant incentive.

In short, just because a pollution control technique may hold promise, that doesn't mean the federal government will deem it acceptable for a cleanup plan. And if it's not acceptable -- "creditable," in the bureaucratic lingo -- it doesn't help the district meet its Clean Air Act obligations.

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