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Valley group isn't standing idle in clean-car campaign
By Mark Grossi/The Fresno Bee
December 12, 2006
By the numbers
Valley Clean Air Now plans a campaign to clean up the dirtiest-running cars. This program will:
Repair 10,000 gross-polluting vehicles.
Eliminate 445 tons of smog-making pollution annually.
Pay $11,800 per ton of reduction using private money. One state program pays up to $13,600 per ton for similar reductions.
Raise $3 million to $5 million from businesses and industries.
Source: Doug Lawson, air-quality researcher
At dawn in Bakersfield two months ago, 30 car owners waited for a smog inspection after lining up the night before and sleeping in their vehicles.
They knew that Valley Clean Air Now, a private nonprofit group, would hand out $500 repair coupons to get their cars running clean enough to pass the state's smog test. Their cars would be tested with a laser technology that sometimes finds polluters missed by the state's test.
"By the end of that day, we had 500 cars," said Cristina Guccione of Clean Air Now. "People are catching on."
So is the voluntary Tune-in and Tune-up program, which started modestly three years ago with a few dozen cars. Now, hundreds of cars show up in Fresno, Stockton, Bakersfield and Visalia when the program holds periodic cleanup events.
Clean Air Now has invested a little more than $100,000 of private donations in the program. Officials this month said they are ready to take a bigger swipe at the San Joaquin Valley's stubborn smog, which ranks among the worst in the nation.
The group wants to launch a campaign to raise $3 million to $5 million in private grants from businesses and industries to sponsor the voluntary cleanup events twice a month. Officials plan to clean up the 10,000 dirtiest-running cars on Valley roads.
"We feel like we have the most cost-effective program out there," said Paul Betancourt, chairman of the board for Clean Air Now. "We want pollution reductions from 10,000 cars."
In the last year, using technology that the state has yet to embrace in its Smog Check program, Clean Air Now has cut more than two tons of smog-making pollution just in the Fresno area, one air researcher says.
Doug Lawson, a Denver-based air researcher who worked many years in California, says the nonprofit's proposed expansion could have a big effect. Valleywide, the program might remove 450 tons of smog-making pollution per year from the dirtiest-running vehicles by repairing them.
About 10% of vehicles in the Valley account for more than half of the pollution created by cars and light trucks. Cars and light trucks in the Valley annually emit about 40,000 tons of the smog-making gases.
All on-road vehicles, including heavy-duty diesel trucks, produce more than 100,000 tons of such gases each year in the Valley.
"If we could eliminate the pollution from gross-polluting vehicles," Lawson said, "I think we would have a good chance of attaining the air quality standards."
The key test is remote sensing, in which a technician shoots a laser beam across the exhaust coming from the tailpipe. It quickly determines whether the car is a smog offender.
"Some of the cars tested in CAN's program actually passed California's Smog Check" test, Lawson said. "But remote sensing detected that they were still gross polluters."
Lawson said polluting vehicles often pass the state Smog Check because engines and emission systems can run differently from day to day. About 20% of the vehicles in the Clean Air Now program passed a state Smog Check test, even though they needed extensive emission repairs.
The state first discussed remote sensing in the 1980s, but the technology has not been used yet in the Smog Check program. Smog Check requires vehicle owners to have their smog-control systems inspected every other year.
State officials have studied remote sensing for many years, accumulating data by testing remote sensing equipment on the road.
A spokesman for the state Bureau of Automotive Repair, which oversees the Smog Check program, said remote sensing is under consideration, but there are no immediate plans to use it. The technology has not been proven to state officials, said automotive repair spokesman Glenn Mason.
"At some point, it may be part of Smog Check," he said. "The research is ongoing."
Years ago, remote sensing was a tough sell politically because officials worried about government invading people's privacy with random roadside checks on vehicles.
Lawson, who once worked for the California Air Resources Board, suggested remote sensing instead could be used on a voluntary basis, as Clean Air Now has done.
"With Smog Check, you have to go through the test to prove that you're not guilty of driving a polluting car," he said. "If you make remote sensing voluntary, you're just volunteering to see if your car's emission system needs work."
The reporter can be reached at mgrossi@fresnobee.com or(559) 441-6316.
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