Health advocates and diesel engine makers formed an unlikely alliance Tuesday, as they pushed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adopt rules requiring cleaner, low-sulfur diesel fuel.
But oil industry representatives say the proposed standards would likely raise diesel fuel prices, hurting anyone who has to fill up a tractor-trailer, garbage truck or school bus.
“This is going to have a major impact on the consumer,” Edward Murphy, a manager at the American Petroleum Institute, testified at a public hearing in Rosemont.
“What’s happened [to gasoline prices] in the last couple weeks in Chicago is going to look very minimal,” said Murphy.
In May, the EPA proposed new environmental rules that would cut particulate matter from diesel engines 90 percent by 2007 and drop smog-causing chemicals 95 percent by 2010.
Most troubling to the oil industry, the new standards would reduce the amount of sulfur in diesel fuel by 97 percent, beginning in 2006. Oil industry officials would like to see only a 90 percent cut.
The hearings drew more than 40 speakers, including industry and government officials, environmental and health advocacy groups and Chicago-area residents.
The EPA is accepting written comments on the proposal until Aug. 14. It will hold hearings in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Denver before it finalizes the rules by the end of the year.
A hearing was already held in New York City.
Maureen Damitz of Chicago testified about her 11-year-old son Kyle’s asthma and her struggle to find the right doctors and medicines and to keep their home free of dirt and dust.
“I can control so many areas,” she told the panel. “But I cannot control the air he breathes.”
EPA officials estimate the rule changes would bump diesel fuel prices up between 3 and 4 cents per gallon, said Margo Oge, director of the EPA’s office of transportation and air quality in Washington. She said it would cost oil refiners about $30 million each to comply with the new rules–a cost of about $3.5 billion industry-wide.
Murphy, however, claimed the EPA was underestimating the cost of the changes. He predicted the changes would force some smaller refiners out of the diesel business, pushing the supply of diesel down and prices up.
Engine makers can meet the new standards, said Warren Slodowske, an environmental manager for International Truck and Engine Corp. in Chicago.
The company, which employs about 1,250 people at its facility in Melrose Park, makes diesel engines for school buses, garbage trucks and other vehicles.
“Sulfur is to diesel as lead was to gasoline engines,” Slodowske said. “Give us clean fuel, and we can develop very clean engines.”
The issue is particularly pressing in Chicago, said Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs for American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago.
“We’re the freight transportation hub of the country,” he said. “We have a lot of truck traffic.”
The ALA wants to push the deadlines for smog control up to 2006.
The pollutants affect people with lung ailments such as emphysema and common allergies, he said.
The overall trend in diesel fuel pollution is a positive one, said Allen Schaeffer of the Diesel Technology Forum, a group that includes engine makers, their suppliers and oil companies.
The pollution emitted by today’s diesel trucks is one-eighth of that emitted by trucks under the standards of just 12 years ago, he said.
