Can PA Do Away with its Vehicle Emissions Inspection Program?

The Pennsylvania Senate earlier this month passed a bill that would require the end of the Keystone state’s vehicle emission inspection program –one that GASP has written about extensively (here and here and here).

That begs the question: Can Pennsylvania end its vehicle inspection program? 

“Not if the Clean Air Act is enforced as written,” GASP Senior Attorney John Baillie said.

Here’s why:

Pennsylvania (along with northern Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and parts of southern Maine) is included in the Ozone Transport Region created by section 184(a) of the Clean Air Act.  

Congress added the Ozone Transport Region to the Act in 1990 to provide a means to help reduce the amount of ozone-forming pollution that could be exported across state lines in the northeastern United States. 

Because Pennsylvania is in the Ozone Transport Region, the Clean Air Act requires that it implement a vehicle emission inspection program “in each area … that is a metropolitan statistical area or part thereof with a population of 100,000 or more.”  

This requirement is not contingent on Pennsylvania’s attainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (the NAAQS), which makes sense given the purpose of the Ozone Transport Region: vehicle emissions in Pennsylvania, even from areas within the state that attain the NAAQS for ozone, might contribute to ozone attainment problems in downwind states.

Notably, the Clean Air Act does not provide a mechanism by which the vehicle emission inspection program for an area within the Ozone Transport Region might be rescinded.

In contrast, the vehicle emission inspection requirement imposed on states outside the Ozone Transport Region is contingent upon the degree of those states’ nonattainment of the NAAQS for ozone. 

The Clean Air Act imposes separate vehicle emission inspection requirements on what’s known as Moderate Areas (of nonattainment of the NAAQS for ozone), and “each urbanized area … with a 1980 population of 200,000 or more” within a so-called Serious Area.  

A Severe Area is subject to all the requirements that apply to Serious Areas, and an Extreme Area is subject to all the requirements that apply to Severe Areas, including the vehicle emission inspection requirement. 

However, once a state outside the Ozone Transport Region attains the NAAQS for ozone, it can eliminate its vehicle emission inspection program if it can show that elimination will not interfere with continued attainment of the NAAQS. 

Indeed, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently published a proposal to eliminate North Carolina’s vehicle emission inspection program based on that state’s showing that it had attained the NAAQS for ozone and will continue to do so even without the program, even though eliminating the program is predicted to increase state-wide emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) by 1,190 tons per year.

Past attempts by the Pennsylvania Senate to eliminate the vehicle inspection program have failed to gain traction in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

Stay tuned. We’ll track this latest one and let you know if it does any differently.