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Re: [alfa] Fwd: [alfaromeo750-101] Fw: Smog legislation, pass it on



At 10:53 AM -0800 02-24-2004, Brian O'Kelley wrote:
I thought california people on this list might be
interested in this posting from the 750/101 list.

 > Here we go again!  As predicted, legislation has
 been reintroduced
 in the California Assembly to repeal the state's
 current rolling emissions
 test exemption for vehicles 30 years old and older.
 A.B. 2683 repeals the
 current pro-hobbyist exemption and replaces it with
 a provision requiring
 the permanent testing of all pre-1976 vehicles.
 This year, the bill was
 introduced by California State Assemblywoman Sally
 > Lieber (D-District 22).
Actually, unless I'm reading the text of the bill wrong--quite possible--the bill proposes to change the scope of the law by exempting all pre-1975 vehicles. This does away with the rolling exemption for vehicles that have reached 30 years of age, but doesn't attempt to work backwards, which some proposals have called for. Assemblywoman Lieber seems to have learned from last year's legislative session that wording a bill in such a way as to require testing of cars manufactured all the way back to the beginning of time included vehicles manufactured before there were emission standards. In that sense, this bill is conceived more intelligently; however, it's going to going to piss off those folks who were eagerly looking forward to that 30-year cutoff.

I don't know where Sally's district is, but lots of the impetus for snagging older cars in a smog-check comes from the Central Valley, where folks are concerned that their air pollution is born in the Bay Area, after which it's sucked through the Altamont Pass to deteriorate the quality of the Valley environment. I have no doubt about the meteorological basis of this argument, that is, the sea breeze does move in that direction, but I quibble with the degree. The Valley has an immense amount of heavy truck traffic, agricultural machinery, atmospheric dust and other unregulated contributors to air pollution that cannot go unaccounted for in any calculation of air quality, not to mention its own (burgeoning) population of passenger cars and light trucks.

She may represent a southern California AQMD, another region that has serious air quality problems. That doesn't excuse poorly conceived legislation, but at least they don't point fingers.

Lee
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