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California Crackdown

April 03, 2010 |

Special Reports

Up in the air?

California postpones enforcement of its off-highway emissions rule, leaving contractors wondering what to do next.

By Marcia Gruver and Mike Anderson

Editor’s note: This is the first part in a series of articles on California’s off-highway emissions regulations and their potential impact on the rest of the country.

California’s contractors can be excused if they’re a bit confused these days. For the past decade, the California Air Resources Board has been promising – and then delivering – a strict set of regulations governing off-highway equipment emissions. Enforcement for large contractors, identified as having fleets of heavy equipment such as dozers, scrapers and excavators with more than 5,000 total horsepower, was to start March 1.

Sukut Construction spent millions repowering its earthmoving equipment. Was it all for naught?

But on Feb. 11, James Goldstene, CARB executive officer, temporarily called the whole thing off. “Effective immediately” and “until further notice,” he said, no enforcement action would be taken for non-compliance on the rule, approved by CARB in July 2007. (See “The CliffNotes version of CARB” sidebar on page 18.)

CARB placed the reason for this decision squarely on California’s devastated construction economy. “The construction industry has felt the sting of the faltering economy with reduced activity and idled off-road equipment,” said Goldstene in the February announcement. “This has made it difficult for contractors to pay for required clean-air upgrades for their fleets.”

It was, in the words of Bill Davis, executive vice president of the Southern California Contractors Association, a “scammy little” press release. “The truth is they don’t have enforcement authority under the Clean Air Act without a (federal) EPA waiver,” he says.

CARB admits the EPA waiver is critical. “EPA authorization is required before we can enforce requirements of the regulation,” says Kim Heroy-Rogalski, manager of CARB’s Off-Road Implementation Section. “Those performance requirements include all requirements to retrofit or turn over vehicles as well as restrictions on adding lower tier vehicles.” But CARB may get its wish sooner rather than later. EPA will conduct a public hearing on the waiver April 14, and invites comments through May 18.

Construction’s downward spiral in the state has called into question some of CARB’s basic assumptions when creating the rule. Now the uncertainty of when – or if – the CARB enforcement hammer will fall has many California contractors questioning the tremendous effort and expense they’ve made to comply.

Testimony time