Here we go again.  This week, the construction industry is seizing yet another opportunity to protest diesel clean up measures for off-road equipment.   Not only is this and other desperately needed diesel clean up rules at risk through the budget process, it could also be attacked at the CARB hearing tomorrow when the board considers amendments to its off-road rule. The proposed changes would make the rule more affordable and flexible, during these economically challenging times, yet industry may very well take advantage of this effort to alleviate financial burdens and attack the entire rule. This is only the most recent of many attacks by the construction industry against the clean up of California's air.

Four years ago, NRDC cosponsored clean construction legislation for California (SB 497, Simitian), designed to retrofit off-road construction equipment and reduce the massive health toll that pollution from the construction industry has taken on millions of Californians.  Instead of binding legislation, industry groups indicated support and even a preference for a CARB regulation to clean up off-road equipment, suggesting that CARB is better equipped to form diesel clean up policies than the legislature (and isn't that ironic given the latest onslaught against diesel regulations through the budget process?). 

A year later, after successfully blocking the Clean Construction bill, the same opposition turned their battle against diesel clean up to the CARB off-road rule that was under development - the one they supported in concept. It took almost three years for CARB to adopt the off-road rule because the industry contested every aspect of the rule at every step of the way, submitting bogus "alternative" proposals that did little if anything more than the status quo.  In July 2007, the board under the leadership of a new Chair adopted a strong, health protective off-road diesel clean up measure that was estimated to save 4,000 lives in addition to avoiding hundreds of thousands of cases of asthma and respiratory illness.

Even now, more than a year after CARB passed the off-road rule, the construction industry is up to their usual tricks, doing anything necessary to roll back the off-road clean up measure.  The Associated General Contractors of California (AGC of CA) petitioned CalOSHA to adopt safety standards for retrofit devices that would seriously undermine the off-road diesel rule and allow them to renege on making required fleet upgrades. We agree with industry's safety concerns, but that's no excuse not to clean up the equipment. In further acts of desperation at the end of last year, the AGC petitioned CARB to reconsider or repeal the off-road rule, and then put pressure on EPA to interfere by denying California the right to regulate pollution from off-road equipment.  The latter attempt to deny California's right to clean up pollution is especially bizarre, since California already adopted its own tailpipe standards for off-road equipment in 2004.

Roughly 180,000 off-road vehicles cause nearly as much pollution as the one million diesel big rigs operating in California. Each year, thousands of Californians die prematurely from this lethal exhaust and it's mind-numbing to think the construction industry is still pushing back on the equipment upgrades, especially when there has been so much public funding to help pay for it.

We hope the board will stick to its guns on the off-road diesel rule, and weigh on the side of public health and reduced costs to the state.  And we hope the legislature and Governor will refrain from using these critical diesel clean up regulations to pay ransom to a small minority of Republican legislators, who are holding the state hostage over demands to strip California's most important health and environmental protections in exchange for their votes on a final budget. Nine out of ten Californians already breathe unhealthy air. Clean air for our golden state has nothing to do with the budget; it's not for sale.