Copyright 1999 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
The
Plain Dealer
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June 18, 1999 Friday, FINAL / ALL
SECTION: METRO; Pg. 4B
LENGTH: 578 words
HEADLINE:
MANY SPEAKERS BACK TIGHTER REGULATIONS ON VEHICLE POLLUTION
BYLINE: By JIM NICHOLS; PLAIN DEALER REPORTER
BODY:
Fourteen-year-old Sarah Rovito's memories of
childhood summers are not those of fun in the sun and outdoor games.
The
Parma girl remembers instead spending those balmy days cooped up in her bedroom,
trapped there by summertime smog that triggered asthma attacks that left the
young girl gasping for life. On those smoggy days, the window unit in her room -
the only air conditioner in her family's home - was her sole source of relief
from debilitating asthma attacks. When Sarah was 4 and her parents saved enough
money for whole-house air conditioning and an air-conditioned car, she recalled
yesterday, "I felt like I was let out of prison."
"This air-pollution
problem has gone on too long," the teenager told a panel of officials from the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency yesterday.
The federal agency
agrees. It has proposed a dramatic new regulation that would
impose strict new pollution limits on passenger vehicles and far cleaner
gasoline. The EPA says the proposal, to be phased in starting
in 2004, would have a pollution-cutting effect equivalent to removing 166
million cars from the road.
At a public hearing yesterday, the last of
four that the EPA scheduled around the country to get input on the proposal,
those speaking in support of the EPA's plan far outnumbered critics from the
auto and oil industries who want some of its provisions relaxed. Overall, more
than 60 people voiced their views on the plan.
Unveiled last month, the
EPA proposal would require automakers to produce vehicles that would, by 2007,
spew 77 to 86 percent less of a key class of smog-forming pollutants called
nitrogen oxides. It also would mandate refiners of gasoline and
diesel fuel to remove up to 90 percent of the naturally occurring
sulfur from the fuel they produce because that contaminant
fouls emission-control systems and consequently makes vehicles pollute more.
Along with nitrogen oxides, the regulation would
dramatically reduce a host of other pollutants that contribute to ozone smog,
acid rain, public-health problems and even premature deaths, according to the
EPA. It contends the regulation would be a huge step toward
cleaning smoggy air that plagues some 77 million Americans who live in and
around bad-air cities while adding about $100 to $200 to the cost of vehicles,
and about 2 cents per gallon to the price of gasoline.
Several officials from the automotive and oil industries supported the
program's goals but faulted its structure, asking the EPA to phase in the
proposal more slowly and with more loopholes. Paul Brochu, director of business
development for a gasoline refiner called Valero Energy Corp.,
predicted gasoline "price spikes and supply shortages if the
rule is implemented as proposed."
But dozens of speakers argued that the
only acceptable changes to the proposal would be earlier compliance deadlines
and stricter pollution limits.
Minivan owner and mother Debbi Perkul of
Pepper Pike, who read a newspaper article about the hearing Wednesday, said she
came to tell EPA officials she would "pay whatever it takes" to drive a cleaner
vehicle.
"I'm worried about the quality of life for my children," she
said as she held her 3-month-old son, Daniel. "I want them to be able to play
outside and not have to worry about ozone action days, and be able to play in
the rain without worrying about acid rain, and be able to taste the snow without
worrying about it being poisoned by toxic air pollution."
LOAD-DATE: June 19, 1999 
