Vehicle emissions may someday be monitored from street
Text 
No Comments [ Add Comment ]By LORETTA PARK
Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau
lpark@standard.net
FARMINGTON -- Vehicle emission testing once a year or every other year may become a thing of the past.
Davis and Weber health officials are considering a program similar to one Oregon is using in which a receiver placed at an intersection or on a pole can read emissions emitted from a vehicle as it drives by, but only if it has a computer chip installed.
It is one of the ways that could bring down the fine particulate and ozone levels to meet new federal requirements, said Delane McGarvey, Davis County's Environmental Health Services division director.
"This will help us catch the gross polluters more quickly," said Scott Braeden, the lead air pollution auditor for Weber-Morgan Health Department.
As of Tuesday, all of Davis, Utah and Salt Lake counties, along with parts of Weber, Box Elder, Tooele and Cache counties, were deemed out of compliance by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Meeting the new standards to get into compliance is going to be challenging, officials said. One of the reasons is Utah's topography, according to the 2007 report by the state's Division of Air Quality. The Wasatch Mountains act as a barrier for air movement along the Top of Utah.
The Wasatch Front is also heavily populated, which produces the emissions that cause air pollution. The emissions come primarily from vehicles, but also from refineries, furnaces and wildfires.
Not every county requires emission testing, Braeden said. Morgan, Box Elder and Tooele counties do not require the testing, but residents travel through Weber and Davis counties in vehicles that could pollute the air.
"Right now, we're a nonattainment area and we have six years to become an attainment area," McGarvey said. That's with the fine particulates, and the county definitely hasn't met the ozone requirement.
How that is going to happen neither he nor state officials can say.
"It's going to be a tough nut," said Cheryl Heying, director of Utah Division of Air Quality. "There's really not a smoking gun there."
The law of the land, which went into effect in 2006, allows 35 micrograms of fine particulate per cubic meter of air, which is down from 65 micrograms. The state was in compliance when the standard was 65 micrograms per cubic meter, Heying said.
The new ozone or smog standard reduced the amount from 80 parts per billion to 75 parts per billion. It came online in March, Heying said.
Particulates are the highest during the winter and ozone is at its worst during the summer.
The state has until 2012 to submit plans to the EPA on how it will clean the air by 2014, officials said. But achieving that is going to be difficult at best.
One way to help bring the state into compliance is a new method of testing for emissions. The test is capable of scanning vehicles daily, not just once a year, he said. The air quality has improved in areas where the program is in use.
Davis County plans to test the program on 100 of its own vehicles before committing to use it for all of the county, said Lewis Garrett, county health director.
The receivers on poles and at intersections record the emissions from the computer chips installed in the vehicles and keep the information in a computer.
If a vehicle is out of compliance, the owner gets a warning in the mail and has a deadline to fix the car, Garrett said. If the vehicle remains in compliance for the entire year, the owner receives an emission certificate.
The owner then does not need to take the vehicle to a testing center for an emissions test. This can cut the number of vehicles needing emission tests, resulting in a cost saving.
Officials are still negotiating with the vendor over the price of the system, Garrett said.
The computer chip, which costs $50 per car, can be used only in gas-powered vehicles built in 1996 or later, and in diesel vehicles built in 2007 or later, McGarvey said.
It will be a voluntary program, so vehicle owners concerned about "big brother" watching can choose not to participate, Garrett said.
But in areas using similar programs, most vehicle owners want to know if their car is polluting and get it fixed before a small problem leads to bigger, more costly problems, Garrett said.
If the counties are unable to meet the new standards, the penalties include withholding federal funding for transportation projects. The state would still receive funding, but a county in violation of the pollution standards would not be able to use it. That happened in Utah County several years ago, Heying said.
Add Your Comment
