U.S. judge upholds Calif. smog agency on fleet fuel
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A U.S. federal judge has upheld a California air quality agency’s rule that fleet owners must use vehicles that run on the cleanest-burning fuels.
U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, in a decision on Friday, said the South Coast Air Quality Management District can enforce its order for state and local government to purchase fleet vehicles that run on fuels like methanol and compressed natural gas instead of diesel fuel.
The district - the smog control agency for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties - adopted the rules for both private and government fleets in 2000 and was challenged in federal court in Los Angeles by the Engine Manufacturers Association, a trade group.
California is moving on several fronts to develop and implement new rules to clean up gases and other emissions from cars and trucks and power plants.
The state’s Air Resources Board has adopted the nation’s first-ever regulations to control tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide. U.S. and overseas automakers are challenging the rules in a federal court suit.
The EMA group argued that the federal Clean Air Act preempted the district, but Cooper rejected the claim.
EMA appealed and the case wound up at the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the district could not enforce the rules on private fleets.
But the High Court sent the case back to Cooper to look at other issues, including whether the district was a “market participant” and not a regulator, and could order some of the rules.
In her decision Friday, Cooper said the rules for state and local government “fall within the market participant doctrine” and are not preempted by the Clean Air Act.
A spokesman for the EMA said fleet owners “should have the right to purchase whatever vehicles they decided to purchase. The South Coast district is not acting as a market participant but as a regulator.”
The EMA is considering a possible appeal of Cooper’s ruling, he said.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer called the ruling “a major victory, not for pollution regulators but for air quality and public health.”
Lockyer said studies showed that 70 percent of the cancer risk in air pollution comes from diesel exhaust.
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