Dumping Diesel for Cleaner Air
The South Coast Air Quality Management District is poised to adopt far-reaching rules that will dramatically cut cancer-causing diesel emissions from city-owned buses and trash trucks. Not surprisingly, the region’s air pollution control agency is under tremendous pressure from diesel engine makers, among others, to back off. It should hold firm. Because of the vast size of local fleets, an AQMD mandate could push other communities, even other states, in the same healthy direction.
The rules, up for a vote Friday, would affect public fleets--the cars, trucks and buses that government agencies operate. The rules would require that new transit buses and trash trucks bought by city, county, state or federal agencies in the Los Angeles Basin--along with newly purchased vehicles of private trash haulers that contract with cities--be powered by cleaner alternative fuels rather than diesel. Many agencies have already begun to move in this direction, purchasing buses or trucks that run on compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas or propane. Fleet cars and light-duty trucks could meet the new standards with available low-emission gasoline-powered models. Later this year, the AQMD may take up proposals for school buses and other vehicles.
Public agencies in South Coast’s four-county area operate about 70,000 vehicles, many of which run on diesel fuel. The proposed requirements emerge from the AQMD’s troubling conclusion last year that diesel emissions are responsible for most of the cancer risk in this area. That finding, based on air quality monitoring across the region, adds to a growing body of research on diesel’s health dangers, including, most recently, a link to cardiac problems.
Not surprisingly, diesel engine makers and refiners fiercely oppose the new rules and argue that governments should be able to buy lower-emission diesel engines. But this so-called green diesel technology is not yet widely available and doesn’t sufficiently cut either diesel’s toxic emissions or its smog-causing agents.
The proposed rules demonstrate the AQMD’s welcome new resolve to improve air quality. These rules, moreover, will have the important spillover effect of encouraging diesel engine makers to commercialize cleaner technology and set a standard for public fleets that will surely be emulated nationally.
