The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is recommending an extension of the E-check auto emissions test in seven counties in Northeast Ohio.
The area is not meeting federal clean air requirements, said Heidi Griesmer, spokeswoman for the agency.
The air quality in Northeast Ohio is serious
and we (the agency) are under a federal mandate to do vehicle emissions testing in the Cleveland-Akron area she said.
The agency is proposing a two-year extension of the contract, which expires at the end of the year, to the General Assembly, which will ultimately make the decision.
The affected counties are Cuyahoga, Lorain, Lake, Geauga, Medina, Summit and Portage.
Griesmer said the agency realizes the $19.50 test, which must be done every two years, is an inconvenience for motorists. To alleviate some of the burden, the agency is asking that the exemption standards, which currently allow cars manufactured up to two years ago to be exempt from testing, to be increased to four years.
If motorists with cars that are four years old were exempt from emissions testing, about 595,000 more cars would be exempt, said Carol Hester, spokeswoman for the Ohio EPA.
It (E-check) is not a widely popular program. There is very little benefit with testing new cars because they have things such as onboard computers to check emissions systems. They are built to run cleaner and to let the driver know there is something wrong. It is not newer cars that are causing the air quality problem Hester said.
E-check reduces emissions by 100,000 tons per year in the Ohio counties in which it is used, she said.
The tests are used in 14 counties in Ohio, but the agency is also proposing to end tests in seven counties in the
Dayton-Cincinnati area. The counties are Hamilton, Butler, Clermont, Warren, Montgomery, Greene and Clark.
The contract expires and we (the agency) did a thorough analysis and determined we can do other things because we are not under a federal mandate
Griesmer said.
Although the Ohio EPA has yet to decide, procedures that could be enforced are: requiring gas stations to put more effective valves on underground storage tanks, using cleaner burning gasoline and changing permit levels in power plants to more accurately show emission amounts.
Sen. Timothy Grendell, R-Chesterland, said while he supports clean air, there are better ways to achieve it.
He said he supports using a remote sensing system that uses an infrared source to emit a light through emission smoke from vehicles on the highway to detect if the vehicles are failing emissions tests.
This doesn't waste the time and money of people who are in compliance with the laws
he said.
If the two-year extension occurs, Grendell said he does not believe it should be at the cost of consumers.
If we have E-check
and that's a big if
the cost should be picked up statewide because we are complying with federal mandate
he said.
Ohio Senate Minority Leader C.J. Prentiss, D-Cleveland, said she does not necessarily support E-check, but that something must be done to clean the air.
In most cases
E-check is not doing the job it is supposed to do. Emission levels are too high. We need to consider what else to do
she said.
