State government should reduce the hassle involved with car emissions tests, but must solve technical glitches and study several other pollution sources before implementing a new Front Range air quality policy.
Automobiles long have been the worst air pollution problem in the Greeley-Fort Collins and metro Denver areas, so for years drivers have endured the time-consuming duty of taking our cars to emissions testing stations.
But in recent years, the state has been developing a program that tests cars as they drive by sensors, which are housed in vans parked on roadsides. Owners of clean-running cars needn’t take their vehicles in for inspections if they twice pass the roadside tests. There are six vans that travel among 66 locations in eight Front Range counties, testing 3,300 vehicles per month, but soon three more vans will be added with the goal of testing 4,500 cars monthly.
The state hopes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency eventually will let it use roadside tests for 50 percent of the 1 million vehicles that must pass emissions inspections in a rolling four-year period.
But to do so, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment must solve a series of problems. Colorado now meets federal pollution standards but doesn’t have much wiggle room.
While roadside monitors are good at proving that cars are clean, they’re bad at catching the 2 to 5 percent of highly polluting vehicles. These dirty cars add an extra 9 tons of pollution to the air per day.
If the state can’t find those dirty cars and tell the owners to fix them, it will have to find other ways to improve air quality. But industrial polluters, including oil and gas drilling companies, say they shouldn’t have to do more than their share to cleanse the air.
The department needs time to figure out what program will achieve the best results with the least cost and hassle.
Meanwhile, Rep. Joe Stengel, R-Littleton, introduced a premature bill ordering the health department to implement roadside tests. House Bill 1302 is pending in the Appropriations Committee.
We like the concept of roadside testing, but there’s no need for the legislature to order the health department to embrace one specific plan while the alternatives are still under development.
