You asked several questions regarding Connecticut’s motor vehicle emissions inspection program. You wanted to know:

SUMMARY

Federal law requires states that are classified as in serious or worse non-attainment status for any of the automobile-related air pollutants controlled by the Clean Air Act to incorporate an enhanced motor vehicle emissions inspection program into their state implementation plans. The law provides no opportunity for waiver of this statutory requirement. Since Connecticut falls into the category of serious non-attainment for ozone, it is subject to the mandate to operate an enhanced inspection program.

The governor and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) suspended the current emissions inspection program in April of this year. However, Connecticut is not currently operating under any formal waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to accomplish this. Rather, the current relationship between EPA and the state is a matter of an informal rather than a formal process. Although the regional EPA administrator put some pressure on the state in May to resume the program quickly, EPA has not yet acted to force this to occur. Because the status is based upon an informal situation, it is subject to change at any time. At this time, EPA has accepted an assurance from the state that when the program resumes, all vehicles subject to testing will still undergo testing by November 15, 2005, the end of the two-year test cycle period from when the program was initiated in 2003.

Of the three test technologies and methods you mention—remote sensing, mobile van-based testing, and transponder-equipped vehicles—remote sensing is the most widely implemented. However, EPA recognizes it only in the context of it being used for inspection program evaluation and compliance, clean screening programs, and identification of gross polluters. It is not used as a replacement for fixed emissions inspection programs. Remote sensing involves sampling a vehicle’s exhaust content using sensors set up at the roadside. The technology was developed in the late 1980s and has been commercially available for about 13 years. While it is fairly accurate in terms of reading tailpipe emissions, it has some limitations in that it cannot identify evaporative emissions problems (associated with defective gas caps) or problems that may have been identified by a vehicle’s on-board diagnostics system but not yet evident in its exhaust emissions—both of which are identified in the standard emissions inspection programs.

Van-based enforcement appears to be best suited to meeting inspection program auditing and random testing requirements. It is not clear if the type of testing that could be conducted with the equipment suitable for van-based enforcement would meet the enhanced inspection program requirements to which Connecticut is subject. It also is not clear how test subjects would be selected to satisfy testing requirements.

The concept of vehicles equipped with transponders that would transmit relevant emissions-related data through satellite link to remote testing centers appears to have been first proposed in California around 1996. While California has gone so far as to test the technology in a small number of vehicles, it has yet to be implemented, nor does EPA appear to have embraced the concept as a necessary next step in on-board diagnostics. It may be some time before this concept is mandated for new vehicles, if it is, and some time after that before a sufficient proportion of the vehicle fleet would have such equipment to warrant its consideration as a replacement for current test programs.

POSSIBILITY FOR OBTAINING A PROGRAM WAIVER

No such possibility appears to exist under the federal Clean Air Act (CAA). Under the federal law, air quality regions that cannot attain the required ambient air quality standards by the deadlines can fall into one of several levels of non-attainment status ranging from marginal to extreme. Classification within one of these levels triggers certain programs and actions that must be present in the state’s implementation plan for it to comply. The measures generally become more stringent as the classification level worsens. Any area that has a non-attainment classification of “serious” or worse must have as part of its program an enhanced motor vehicle emissions inspection program. Connecticut’s status with respect to the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1-hour ozone standard is “severe” with respect to the southwestern corner of the state and “serious” with respect to the remainder of the state. Thus Connecticut falls within the CAA provisions that require the state to operate an enhanced emissions inspection program (42 U. S. C. § 7511a(c) and (d)).

Unlike some other areas of the CAA, such as the requirements relating to sale of oxygenated fuel, where the law allows for a state to apply for a waiver of the requirement, the CAA’s requirements for serious and worse attainment areas are mandatory and offer no possibility for waivers. (Although the law allows for application for a waiver from the

oxygenated fuel requirement, EPA has never granted one. ) Thus even though a significant portion of Connecticut’s ozone levels are due to ozone transport from the west, it has no significance with respect to the requirement for Connecticut to have an enhanced emissions inspection program since no waiver of this requirement is provided for in the CAA.

CONNECTICUT’S CURRENT STATUS WITH RESPECT TO THE SUSPENSION OF THE INSPECTION PROGRAM

According to William Menz of DEP’s Air Bureau, Connecticut is not operating under any formal federal waiver since the governor and DMV suspended operation of the current inspection program. Rather, the relationship between EPA and the state with respect to the suspended inspection program appears to be based on informal discussions and agreements. Menz notes that EPA’s primary interest is to get a functioning program operating in Connecticut. In a May 5, 2004 letter to the DEP commissioner, Robert Varney, EPA’s Regional Administrator expressed concern about the program’s suspension and an opinion that the EPA “did not see any outstanding problems that would necessitate a continued suspension of the program and we believe the program needs to be restarted as soon as possible. ” Despite this expression of concern, EPA has taken no other direct actions as a result of the program’s suspension.

Connecticut apparently has made an assurance to EPA through this informal process that, once the program is restarted, it will have all vehicles subject to testing through their initial test cycle by November 15, 2005. This date represents the end of the original two-year period since the initiation of the current program in 2003. In effect, the state has assured EPA that, despite the fact that the program has not operated continuously during these two years, all vehicles that would have been tested during the first two years of the program will still be tested before the two years expire.

REMOTE SENSING, INSPECTION VANS AND OTHER ALTERNATE TEST METHODS

EPA does not recognize any of the alternate testing technologies or methods you mentioned (remote sensing, mobile inspection vans, transponder-equipped cars) as an acceptable replacement for a fixed emissions inspection program. Of the three, remote sensing has had the widest implementation, but only as an adjunct to existing inspection programs for certain limited purposes.

Remote Sensing

Remote sensing consists of a system where a sensing device set up at the roadside reads the exhaust content of a passing motor vehicle as the exhaust passes the sensor. Systems can use infrared, ultraviolet, or laser beams, although infrared is the most frequently used of the three. The technology was first developed in the late 1980s and first made commercially available in 1991. California, Colorado, Missouri, Texas, and Arizona have made the most extensive use of remote sensing.

EPA recognizes remote sensing for three basic uses—auditing and evaluating the effectiveness of a vehicle inspection program, “clean screening” programs, and identification of high emitters. Its widest spread use to date has been to audit existing inspection programs. Remote sensing for program auditing purposes provides an independent measure of vehicle emissions that can be used to evaluate the inspection program and assist in estimating the emissions reductions that result from the fixed inspection program. However, EPA does not accept remote sensing as a replacement for a fixed inspection program.

Some concerns have been raised over the cost of using remote screening to evaluate the vehicle inspection program. In March 1999, the Washington State Department of Ecology released a study of remote sensing in which it concluded that remote sensing would provide no practical benefit to the state’s emissions inspection program as a means to evaluate individual vehicle emissions. Part of its concern was that it was more costly per vehicle ($ 11) to obtain sufficient data than it was currently paying its test contractor for each inspection ($ 8. 50).

Remote sensing has been used as a way to identify vehicles that can be exempted from emissions testing in so called “clean screening” programs. In effect, the remote sensing system identifies in-use vehicles that are running clean allowing these vehicle owners to be notified not to report for testing. However, recently DMV’s emissions consultant, de la torre Klausmeier Consulting, Inc. , concluded that relative to model year exemptions such as Connecticut employs, remote sensing is a more expensive way to identify candidates for exemption. Klausmeier indicated that only Missouri is currently using remote sensing for this purpose. DMV’s consultant also found that current remote sensing technology cannot detect certain problems associated with (1) evaporative emissions defects and (2) defects identified by on-board diagnostics systems, both of which are detectable in a conventional test system. The consultant concluded that as more pre-1996 vehicles without on-board diagnostic capabilities are replaced by vehicles with on-board diagnostics, the limitation of remote sensing as a means of clean screening these vehicles will increase. This is because many of the problems identified by on-board diagnostics systems are component failures that could lead to high emissions at some point, but at the time of screening the catalytic converter masks the problem. Remote sensing is not capable of identifying these situations so that the vehicle might qualify for clean screening even though its malfunction light is showing an emissions related problem has occurred.

Klausmeier rejected the idea of remote sensing being used as a replacement program wherein only high emitters are identified and notes that no states have successfully implemented a remote sensing program for this purpose. He finds three reasons for this: (1) remote sensing cannot determine if a vehicle is a high emitter with enough accuracy to be used without an emissions test to confirm its results, (2) as noted above, it cannot identify the majority of vehicles with illuminated engine malfunction lights or defective gas caps, and (3) to identify a majority of the high emitting vehicles requires a very large number of remote sensing tests to be performed. For example, the Washington study concluded that to view the 800,000 vehicles being inspected in the Puget Sound area would require more than 35 million remote sensing readings. Klausmeier cites studies concluding that to cover 70% of the vehicle fleet with remote sensing would require a total number of tests equal to three times the total number of vehicles in the fleet.

Mobile Inspection Vans

The concept of using vans with test equipment to go to high traffic locations such as shopping malls and conduct emissions tests on vehicles at these sites currently appears to have application only as a way of fulfilling program auditing or random roadside inspection requirements of a state’s implementation plan. Like remote sensing applications, EPA does not recognize this testing method as a replacement for fixed inspection programs. We were unable to find any significant applications of this test method in other states.

The main issue with mobile vans as a testing methodology is the type of tests the van-based equipment would be capable of conducting. It would most likely be limited to idle-mode type testing since testing vehicles under engine loads requires the use of a dynamometer that would probably be impractical in a mobile testing environment. Idle-mode testing is both less accurate and may not be capable of measuring all of the pollutants that must be monitored. Idle-mode testing does not constitute the type of enhanced emissions testing the CAA requires for states like Connecticut.

Another significant issue associated with van-based testing as the sole means of conducting the emissions test required by the CAA is how vehicles would be selected for testing.

Transponder Equipped Vehicles Providing Data Electronically to Test Stations

We could find no indication that any such programs exist at the present time. The idea suggests that motor vehicles would have to be equipped with a special device that would either continuously transmit data through the air or would be capable of being queried from a central location similar to vehicles equipped with global positioning satellite devices. In all likelihood, since no motor vehicles currently appear to have such devices, any use of this technology would most likely have to be a technology going forward—that is, it would apply only to newly manufactured vehicles.

It appears that this concept was originally put forward by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) around 1996. It is commonly referred to as OBDIII for the third generation of on-board diagnostics systems. The concept builds on the current OBDII systems built into newer cars. OBDII systems use a computer module in the vehicle to monitor many of the vehicle’s functions, including its emissions systems, and store this data so that it can be downloaded into a diagnostic computer through a terminal hookup. Connecticut’s current inspection program provides for OBD testing for 1996 and newer vehicles.

The OBDIII concept envisioned by CARB is to add a transponder to the OBD system in new vehicles that would provide the vehicle’s OBD data through a satellite telemetry linkup. Theoretically, the system would allow any of the vehicle’s OBD codes that are currently available through direct connection to the diagnostic computer to be read remotely thus identifying it by vehicle identification number and location and providing fault code and status information to a central location.

CARB apparently has been able to advance the technology to a five-vehicle test phase. However, the concept will not be able to be implemented until new vehicles are required to be manufactured with the new equipment. EPA appears to have taken no position on the concept yet and it is likely that a lengthy evaluation period on the federal level

still must take place. Therefore, it would seem that actual implementation of this technology, should it occur, is still a number of years away. In addition, even after implementation, it would be some time before a significant portion of the vehicle fleet was capable of being tested in this way.

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