In a major victory for improved public health, a federal court has upheld South Coast Air Quality Management District rules requiring public agencies in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area to make a gradual transition to clean-fueled trucks and buses to reduce human exposure to cancer-causing diesel soot.
The rules – adopted after a landmark SCAQMD study in 1999 showing that diesel soot is responsible for some 70% of the cancer risk from toxic air pollution in the region – require public agencies to purchase clean-fueled trucks, buses, and other vehicles when replacing worn out ones or expanding their fleets.
The Engine Manufacturers Association challenged the rules, claiming the federal Clean Air Act pre-empted SCAQMD from imposing the requirements.
"The court’s decision reaffirms the District’s landmark fleet rules and allows us to continue to enforce the rules and reduce public exposure to toxic air pollution in the region," said Barry Wallerstein, executive officer of SCAQMD. The requirements cover fleets of public transit buses, school buses, garbage trucks, street sweepers, shuttle buses and taxis serving airports, public works trucks, and other vehicles.
The trade association maintained that SCAQMD’s fleet rules constituted a local vehicle emissions standard, which is prohibited under the federal Clean Air Act.
However, in her ruling, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California wrote that SCAQMD’s fleet rules "regulate the purchasing and leasing of vehicles by fleet operators . . . The rules impose no new emissions requirements on manufacturers whatsoever, and therefore do not run afoul of Congress’s purpose behind motor vehicle preemption: namely, the protection of manufacturers against having to build engines in compliance with a multiplicity of standards."
Cooper added that, "Rather than imposing any numerical control on new vehicles, the rules regulate the purchase of previously-certified vehicles." She explained: "Where a state regulation does not compel manufacturers to meet a new emissions limit, but rather affects the purchase of vehicles, as the fleet rules do, that regulation is not a standard." Therefore, the fleet rules do not violate the Clean Air Act.
SCAQMD is the air pollution control agency for all of Orange County and the major metropolitan portions of Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties.
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This page updated: March 01, 2004
URL: http://www.aqmd.gov/news1/Fleet_court_decision.htm