When Alexa Newman moved to Crystal Lake two years ago, she escaped not only the smog from the steel mills of her northwest Indiana hometown but also a layer of bureaucracy that she loathed.
In McHenry County, Newman discovered, she no longer would be required to take her blue Geo Prizm in for emissions tests, a chore reserved for those living closer to big-city smog.
But as air pollution wafts into the far reaches of suburbia, this government requirement now follows. For the first time, residents in portions of McHenry and Kendall Counties will be required to take their autos in for tests to check exhaust pollutants. Mandatory testing also will reach into previously exempt parts of Lake, Kane and Will Counties.
Most of the new testing sites are built or are under construction and could open as early as December.
“It was great here. I thought, `No more emissions tests,’ ” said Newman, waiting recently on an oil change for her car at Metric Motors in Crystal Lake. “I’m surprised. I don’t perceive traffic or smog as a problem here.”
Regardless of whether it’s a problem, Illinois lawmakers agreed four years ago to expand auto-emissions testing into the distant suburbs and make the test tougher to pass in an effort to meet stricter federal air-pollution standards.
Construction is nearly complete on nine new suburban test sites, which are expected to expand the state program to about 240,000 vehicles in the previously exempt areas. At the same time, 19 old testing centers in the Chicago area are being demolished and rebuilt to accommodate the tougher new testing program, which will use treadmills to take autos on a simulated two-mile urban drive.
The state also is expanding the test area and rebuilding test centers in the East St. Louis area, the only other part of the state where vehicles are checked.
For months, McHenry County residents have been guessing about the purpose of the nondescript building that popped up this month on Liberty Road in Crystal Lake. It is McHenry County’s new testing site.
“I thought it was a car wash,” said Mitch Baker, part-owner of Metric Motors.
“They told me when I first opened here that it would probably be 10 years before we’d see emissions tests,” he said.
Though the Chicago region has reduced air pollution since the federal Clean Air Act of 1990 took effect, it remains classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a “severe ozone non-attainment area”–just one step under the “extreme” designation placed only on Los Angeles.
The new testing program is expected to cost the state more than $385 million over nine years. But the price to the state for failing to comply could have been even higher. The federal government had threatened to withhold $710 million in highway construction money unless the state agreed to conform with the Clean Air Act.
Federal officials expect that the new test will sharply reduce air pollutants. The existing test measures exhaust levels only on idling vehicles.
But not everyone agrees that the new program can deliver what it promises. Though computer models predict certain gains in cleaning the air, a number of researchers have raised questions about whether the state actually can achieve the results.
A study in Minneapolis showed that no change in air quality could be attributed to a similar testing program there. Some researchers suspect that dirty vehicles can pass tests because auto emissions are variable, testing clean one moment and dirty the next.
Under an agreement with the federal EPA, Illinois officials said they would start the tougher testing program no later than January.
“This is viewed as a regional problem,” said Jim Matheny of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s division of inspection and maintenance. “We need to provide additional emission reductions to meet the goals of air-quality standards, and the way to do that is to bring more vehicles into the program.”
In the enhanced test, 1981 and newer cars and trucks fueled by gasoline will be tested on a treadmill called a dynamometer, which simulates driving conditions at speeds up to 50 m.p.h. The test measures emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide, the pollutants that contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog.
“You get more of an actual reading of the vehicle’s pollution,” said Francisco Acevedo, an environmental specialist with the U.S. EPA in Chicago. “Tests on idle only give you a ballpark figure.”
Vehicles will be tested every two years, beginning when the autos are four years old. The state will continue to use the idle test on vehicles made from 1968 to 1980. Older vehicles are exempt.
Autos that fail must be repaired and retested. If a vehicle fails a second test, the owner could receive a waiver, but only after documenting that at least $450 in repairs had been made to try to correct the problem.
If a driver does not bring a vehicle in for testing or does not receive a waiver for a vehicle that fails, that driver’s license and the vehicle’s plates could be suspended.
News about the program has begun trickling in to Chicago’s far-flung suburbs–to mixed reviews.
“I think a lot of people thought they were getting away with something, but the fact was it didn’t get here yet,” said Cathy McCoy Radawich of Crystal Lake.
Chris Byrne of McHenry isn’t looking forward to taking her 1994 Ford minivan in to the Crystal Lake testing center.
“It will be very inconvenient to have to go to Crystal Lake. I can’t stand driving there because it’s so congested,” she said.
