Air Quality Regulations in Development for On-Road Diesel Trucks

By Marni Katz

Special to California Almonds

October 2007 - - Newly proposed air quality regulations could dramatically alter the fleet of heavy-duty diesel trucks on California’s roads and highways, including those used to transport harvested agricultural products such as almonds.

The California Air Resources Board is proposing new regulations on diesel-powered on-road heavy duty trucks in California to reduce air pollution causing emissions.

The new regulations would move the Air Board toward achieving mandates in the California Diesel Risk Reduction Plan to reduce emissions of diesel particulate matter (<PM2.5) and ozone forming nitrogen oxide (NO_x). The plan was adopted in 2000 and calls for a 75-percent reduction in particulate matter emissions by 2010, and an 85 percent reduction by 2020.

The Air Board is also working to develop a new State Implementation Plan for meeting federal clean air deadlines for ozone under the Clean Air Act. Currently 15 local areas in California violate the federal 8-hour ozone standard and two areas violate the federal annual PM2.5 standard.

To achieve this, under the current proposal, heavy-duty engine vehicle owners will have to either replace older engines or retrofit them with a verified diesel emission control strategy to bring them into emissions compliance.  Heavy-duty diesel vehicles are defined as trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating greater than 14,000 pounds.

Requirements will be implemented on a sliding calendar based on the age of the truck engine—focusing on older trucks first. But all on-road heavy duty diesel vehicles with pre-2007 engines must eventually be brought into compliance through the use of “Best Available Control Technology (BACT)”, such as emissions reducing filters or exhaust recirculating systems.

The current proposal would first require older trucks with diesel engines built before 1994 to be retired or retrofitted with BACT technology to reduce NO_x and particulate matter emissions to the equivalent of a 2004 model-year engine. Truck owners will have until Dec. 31, 2009 to bring those pre-1994 vehicles into compliance. Engine model years from 1994 to 1997 will have until the end of 2010 and so on until all trucks with pre-2007 engines are in compliance by Dec. 31, 2013.

A second phase will require pre-2007 truck engines to meet emissions at or below a 2007 model-year engine by 2019.

Fleet owners can use “fleet averaging” to bring their vehicles into compliance, but the practice will mandate additional record keeping and reporting.

Several trucking industry representatives, as well as those representing affiliated businesses, have testified during public workshops on the proposal that the requirements will dramatically impact the fleet of diesel trucks on the road in California, requiring significant and expensive retrofitting of older diesel engines to bring trucks into compliance.

Air Board staff are planning to conduct online surveys of diesel truck operators, including a separate survey for agricultural vehicles, to obtain information about truck ages, purchasing patterns, and vehicle use patterns in advance of submitting a formal proposal to the Air Board for consideration and public comment next year.

“These new regulations as proposed will have a significant impact on seasonal trucks used to transport harvested almonds to and from the field and hulling and processing facilities, and the almond industry must be engaged in the development of the current proposal,” said Gabriele Ludwig of the Almond Board of California.

Ludwig urged all almond industry operators of on-road diesel trucks to complete the survey so that their situation is accurately represented. Air Board officials stressed in public workshops in August that they are particularly interested in finding out more about the seasonal uses of agricultural heavy-duty diesel vehicles and what impacts new regulations might have on the industry. ARB may consider the time of use in determining when a retrofit is needed for seasonal users.

Despite hearing grave concerns about the cost of previously proposed measures to reduce air pollutants from diesel motors in other sectors such as the construction industry, ARB has moved forward with regulations, citing diesel motors as the largest contributor to most air pollutants. The next sector ARB plans to take up for regulations in 2008 are off-road farm vehicles including tractors and other farm equipment.

Members of Air Board staff held additional public meetings in October and plan to continue meeting with stakeholders and gather results of the surveys to present a draft of the new regulations to the board for consideration by mid-2008.

For more information or to complete the survey once it is posted, log onto www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/onrdiesel/onrdiesel.htm.