This is where remote sensing, now more popularly christened the "smog dog," comes in (See "Breathing Room," June 1994). The smog dog measures vehicle emissions using an infrared device set up along the roadside.
Its champions see the smog dog as an easy way to identify gross polluters without putting everyone through some kind of test. They also see the smog dog as an answer to the "clean for a day" problem. If people know they might be nabbed by the smog dog, they may be more mindful of keeping their cars in better working order to avoid a fix-it ticket or other penalties. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency won't allow California (or other states) to rely just on the smog dog. In part, this is because current remote sensing technology does a poor job of measuring nitrogen oxide emissions, which make up a key smog-forming gas. A smog dog to measure NOX is already under way, however, and measuring NOX may not be that important anyway. Many gross polluters fail for all major emission gases.
The bigger dispute is more fundamental. EPA officials seem to think that all cars, not just gross emitters, need to be tested no matter what--and fixed to manufacturer operating standards--if smog check programs are to bring about substantial emission reductions. The smog dog, they say, is not up to the task of testing every car on the highway.
This raises a philosophical more than a technical issue. Just how clean is clean? Is targeting and cleaning up the dirtiest 10 percent of vehicles enough? Air-quality research scientist Douglas Lawson, a former consultant to California's Inspection and Maintenance Committee, argues that getting the really dirty cars is a big enough challenge in itself--and, he argues, that's where the smog check ought to focus. That's where large emission reductions per dollar spent are possible. Out at the margin--where cars are just a little bit dirty--test and repair costs often remain just as high as for gross polluters. But dollars spent on these cars produce few, if any, emission reductions. Often, tinkering with these more marginal polluters actually results in no emission reductions. Sometimes, as Lawson found when reviewing a California Air Resources Board pilot project, these cars produce even more emissions after so-called repairs than before.
When presented with these arguments by California's Inspection and Maintenance Review Committee, EPA officials were unconvinced. And their opinion matters. It's the EPA that doles out emission-reduction credits to states. States that don't get enough credits (which have nothing to do with real-world, measurable emission reductions) for their clean air programs face all kinds of potential penalties. Some California motorists may resent the new smog check program. But it's the least-intrusive plan the state could implement and still meet EPA requirements. Without a rigorous smog check program, drivers could face odd-even driving day regulations. And the state could face restrictions on operations at the Port of Los Angeles and Los Angeles International Airport, or other similarly draconian measures.
The final irony of the smog check uproar is that lots of dollars and effort are being spent to establish a program that may be irrelevant in the relatively near future. As more and more cars are equipped with on-board diagnostics that monitor vehicle emissions, special testing facilities may not be necessary at all.
This longer time horizon should influence the design of current programs--indicating the importance of flexible programs that do not rely on massive near-term investments that may soon be obsolete. The prospect of pouring money into soon-to-be-obsolete equipment worries current operators of smog check stations. After all, it was just a few years back that they were asked to invest in tailpipe test equipment called BAR-90. Now California's new smog check program calls for tests to be done using dynamometers carrying a price tag of $35,000 or more to buy and install (a lot more if facility changes to accommodate installation are necessary).
With some foresight, California battled the EPA's insistence on an even more expensive type of dynamometer. And the state resisted implementing a program that would send all 20 million automobiles in the state to a handful of centralized testing stations that would have required lots of new investment.
Unlike California, Texas opted to stick with a modified BAR-90 type test, there-by avoiding any requirement that smog check stations invest in yet another new technology. Their choice was not simply the result of political acquiescence to repair shop lobbyists. Lawson and others, evaluating the relative performance of the new-fangled dynamometer and the old-fashioned BAR- 90, found that the BAR-90 performed about as well as dynamometers in identifying the real gross polluters. The BAR-90 could not, though, measure NOX. And it didn't do as well testing the more marginally emitting vehicles.
So which equipment test type is better? Ultimately, the answer depends on whether we insist on failing--and repairing--just the really dirty cars, or whether we think most cars that operate above the standard for their make and model should be nabbed through smog checks. And that debate lies at the heart of just about all environmental cleanup programs. How much effort (and money and inconvenience) do people want to spend to achieve each additional bit of cleanup?
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