THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 18, 1994 TAG: 9408180001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A17 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Tony Snow
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
If you hate wasting time in service stations, keep an eye on this fight:
Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency want the Commonwealth of Virginia to change the way it measures automobile exhaust emissions. The Old Dominion lets local garages gauge pollution and repair autos, but envirocrats want to divide inspection and maintenance into separate operations. They propose shutting down 455 service-station emissions-testing sites in Northern Virginia and replacing them with 10 evaluation centers operated by a government contractor.
The new clinics would feature a technology known as IM240, which puts a car through paces that duplicate driving conditions - climbing a hill, accelerating onto a highway - in order to discover how much the vehicle sullies the air.
Unfortunately, the machines suffer from lots of bugs. In Maine, the only state that requires IM240 evaluations, motorists complain about waiting lines for service, and the technology has become a campaign issue. An IM240 system being tried out in New Jersey completely breaks down 40 percent of the time and functions without interruption only 30 percent of the time.
Worse, the gizmos don't provide consistent readings even when they do run. The EPA last year experimented with IM240 equipment at a lab in Indiana, and the machines gave failing marks to 67 vehicles. After agency mechanics fixed the cars, 25 still flunked.
A General Accounting Office study yielded another surprising result: ``Our review of EPA data found that over 25 percent of the vehicles tested using the IM240 test procedure failed an initial emissions test but passed a second test, even though no repairs were made to the vehicles.'' In other words, sometimes sick cars pass muster and healthy ones fail.
It's easy to understand why Virginia wants to stick with its present system. The new arrangement would kill 800 jobs in Washington-area service stations and force drivers to make at least two stops for a car inspection - one for air quality, another for vehicle safety.
Since garage mechanics would not know why cars flunked pollution tests, motorists with faulty cars would have to play vehicular ping-pong, moving from testing center to garage and back, until they got things right or spent $450, whichever came first. (The law really says that.)
Testing stations can't meet this kind of demand. Virginia officials predict the law would require 900,000 inspections per year. If the exams took 20 minutes to complete, clinics would have to operate without interruption for 15 hours a day, 365 days a year.
To add to the grotesquerie, most cars don't need testing. Ten percent of all vehicles - neglected clunkers, mostly - spew out 50 percent of the nation's automotive pollution. Fortunately, engines are getting cleaner. Today's cars emit only about 1 percent as many fumes as vehicles did 20 years ago. Ground-level ozone measurements fell 8 percent between 1982 and 1992, and emissions levels dropped dramatically: 30 percent for carbon monoxide, 20 percent for sulfur dioxide, 89 percent for lead.
The law inhibits further progress by exempting such smoke-chuffers as public-transit buses. Meanwhile, bureaucrats have snubbed the idea of roadside sensors, which enable officials to identify an unclean car and send a notice to the owner: Get a tuneup. This alternative punishes only the guilty and uses cheap, reliable machinery - but, as one top Virginia official says, ``the EPA just doesn't want to talk about it.''
Two more concerns: A 1991 National Research Council study concluded that we don't yet know enough about smog to regulate it. And Kenneth Chilton, an economist at the Center for the Study of American Business, estimates that the air-testing requirements of the law generate at least four times as much in costs as in benefits.
So: The EPA wants drivers to wait forever around garages and testing facilities in order to undergo a procedure that doesn't seem to work. If states refuse to adopt the scheme, Washington can withhold highway funds and impose pollution restrictions that effectively criminalize economic development.
This arm-twisting has coerced several states into toeing the line, but the streak can't continue. Only a handful of jurisdictions now reckon with the EPA's testing procedures, but most Americans eventually will have to accept dramatic changes, ranging from IM240 tests to the mandatory purchase of electric cars.
When they do, consumers for the first time will pay directly for arbitrary clean-air rules. That burden-shifting should invite the kind of rage that simmers in Maine - and ignite calls to bring the EPA to heel. Americans cherish clean air. But the only thing this program guarantees is a clean wallet. MEMO: Mr. Snow's column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate, 5777
W. Century Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. 90045.
KEYWORDS: SYNDICATED COLUMNIST by CNB