Bush Administration Planning to Extend Cuts of Diesel Emissions

December 31, 2002
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 - In an effort to reduce a dangerous
source of air pollution, the Bush administration is
devising rules that would sharply cut diesel pollutants
from construction vehicles, certain farming and mining
equipment and other off-road vehicles.

Environmental groups are hopeful that the standards, which
may not take full effect for almost a decade, will continue
the administration's stance against health hazards caused
by diesel engines.

Those policies, which include strong support of a Clinton
administration plan to cut pollutants from trucks, buses
and other diesel-powered highway vehicles, have drawn
praise even from environmentalists who criticize the Bush
administration for its stance on other air-quality issues.

Government officials said the plan would prevent more than
8,000 premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of
respiratory illnesses every year. A similar plan already in
place to cut pollutants from trucks and buses by 2007 is
expected to save 8,300 lives annually.

The rules for off-road vehicles, which are being written by
the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of
Management and Budget, are expected to be proposed by April
and completed within about a year, after a public-comment
period. Details of the deliberations were reported today by
The Washington Post.

According to officials at the environmental agency, the new
rules would probably force refiners to cut the sulfur
content of diesel fuel for bulldozers, tractors and other
off-road vehicles to 15 parts per million, down from
current levels of as much as 3,400 parts.

The rules would also require makers of diesel engines to
reduce sharply the amount of particulate, nitrogen oxide
and other pollutants produced by the engines they sell.
Administration officials said the cuts for most vehicles
would eventually come to more than 95 percent - in line,
they said, with those the truck and bus plan calls for.

Administration officials, though, are still debating the
timing of the new plan and are also likely to allow engine
makers to delay emissions cuts on some vehicles if they
make reductions in others. Federal officials said that this
proposal would not lessen the beneficial impact to the
environment, but environmental groups were concerned that a
plan for trading emissions could undermine the
requirements.

Jeff Holmstead, the E.P.A.'s assistant administrator for
air and radiation, said that officials were debating two
approaches on the plan's timing. The first would require
refiners to reduce the sulfur content to 15 p.p.m. by 2007.
The second is a "two step" approach that would call for a
reduction to 500 p.p.m. by 2007, then a further reduction
to 15 p.p.m. by 2010.

"At this point, we are leaning toward the two-step
approach," Mr. Holmstead said.

The timing of rules that require cleaner-burning engines
would be tied to the introduction of cleaner fuel,
administration officials said, since fuel with high sulfur
content can easily foul new pollution-control devices.

While it would be "theoretically possible" to use a trading
plan to weaken the new emission standards, Mr. Holmstead
said, the E.P.A. administrator, Christie Whitman, "has been
very clear that's not what we're going to do with the
rule."

In addition to the health benefits, Mr. Holmstead said the
new rule would save "tens of billions of dollars" in lower
health care costs and reduced employee sick days.

John Walke, director of the clean-air program at the
Natural Resources Defense Council, said he was "cautiously
optimistic" about the administration's plan, based on its
track record defending restrictions on diesel pollutants.

But Mr. Walke said he was concerned that the trading plan
could weaken the rules already in place, which were first
proposed by the Clinton administration, for emissions cuts
from diesel trucks and buses by 2007.

Mr. Walke, who called the Bush administration's
diesel-pollutants policy "the one bright light among a
thousand points of darkness" on air-quality issues, also
said he was concerned about what he called the highly
unusual involvement of the White House - through the O.M.B.
- in making the rule.

"There's still a big question over the direction they are
planning to take with this farm and construction-equipment
rule," he said.

Allen Schaeffer, the executive director of the Diesel
Technology Forum, a group representing refiners and makers
of diesel engines and pollution control devices, predicted
that the industry would be able to meet whatever rules the
administration set out.

"This new round of emissions standards is clearly another
challenge," he said, "but one I think industry is working
on with the agency and is prepared to meet."

But battles remained on some crucial issues, he said. "The
most contentious issue deals with the stringency of the
standards and the time frame," he said. "The new rules will
present challenges for manufacturers and fuel refiners
alike."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/national/31ENVI.html?ex=1042379705&ei=1&en=2e916ce05b26e93c