Environment New Jersey, the new home of NJPIRG’s environmental program, supports the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s proposed regulations to eliminate a number of exemptions to the three-minute diesel idling standard.
This move would reduce the amount of hazardous diesel exhaust released into the air and would have a positive effect on air quality within New Jersey.
In addition to this positive step, the Department and the State should take additional steps to reduce diesel soot pollution, including working with local police departments to ensure enforcement of the anti-idling standards, promptly introduce regulations to guide the installation of diesel pollution reduction technologies for school buses and garbage trucks, and other measures that will help to ensure that New Jersey achieves a health-based standard for regulating soot pollution.
Dirty diesel vehicles are major contributors to New Jersey’s seriously polluted air and pose an incredible threat to public health. The particulate pollution (fine soot) emitted by diesel vehicles is toxic and has been linked to a host of serious medical conditions, including lung cancer, heart disease, chronic bronchitis and asthma. A recent report from the Clean Air Task Force, using EPA modeling, found that diesel pollution results in over 800 premature deaths, over 1,300 heart attacks, and over 17,000 asthma attacks each year in New Jersey. The report also cited the state as having the second worst cancer risk rate from diesel pollution in the nation.
The State has taken a positive step in enacting anti-idling measures and the proposed regulations will help to cut down on the tons of soot emitted as a result of needlessly running a diesel engine when a vehicle is not in use.
Especially in light of the proposed improvements, we ask that the Department make a concerted effort to work with state and local police departments in order to ensure that they are vigilant in enforcing the anti-idling standard.
We also urge the Department to speed up the introduction of regulations for the installation of crank-case filters for school buses and the installation of clean up technology for garbage trucks to keep us in line with the timeline envisioned in last year’s legislation.
However, New Jersey still must do more to bring itself back into attainment with U.S. EPA annual soot standards. Currently, 13 counties across New Jersey exceed the standard.
To help New Jersey reach a health-based standard, the state can mandate that off-road diesel vehicles used in public contracts be retrofitted with pollution controls. We urge Governor Jon Corzine to enact an Executive Order to retrofit public contracted off-road vehicles, especially at the state’s ports.
While the U.S. EPA is mandating the introduction of emission reducing engines for diesel vehicles in model year 2007, New Jersey should not fall back on these standards. In order to meet the health-based standard, we should work to ensure that the dirtiest diesel vehicles made prior to the standard are retrofitted with pollution controls or retired. This is especially important for the vehicles with potentially decades left before their retirement. We support a strong polluter pays principle which requires that the private trucking industry pay to clean up their engines through a small increase in the diesel fuel tax. These engine clean-ups would target the most long-term polluting vehicles and would represent a significant reduction of diesel soot pollution.
