Passenger Vehicles

CCA drove the 1984 establishment of the nation’s first Smog Check Program, which identifies polluting vehicles and assures effective emission control systems. Smog Check reduces more than 100 tons of emissions every day, making it one of the most significant pollution-reduction strategies in California today. In 1994, CCA pushed for amendments to the program to reduce fraud and meet the requirements of the 1990 federal Clean Air Act amendments.

In 1999, CCA issued a groundbreaking report, Failing the Grade: How Diesel School Buses Threaten our Children’s Health, which brought national attention to the issue and motivated the state to act. Within six months, the governor created the Lower Emission School Bus Program and allocated $50 million in funding for clean, alternative-fuel school buses. In 2001, CCA and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a follow-up report, No Breathing in the Aisles: Diesel Exhaust Inside School Buses, showing that children who ride diesel school buses may be exposed to up to four times more toxic diesel exhaust than someone traveling in a car directly in front of it. In 2006, CCA helped strengthen the San Joaquin Valley air district’s proposed school bus regulation to prioritize the replacement of the most polluting older buses. The rule could have been strengthened by an expedited clean-up time frame; but it did reduce more ozone than the district’s 2004 State Implementation Plan commitment by 0.6 tons per day, cutting a total of 1.6 tons of ozone per day.

In 1991, CCA campaigned the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to adopt an Alternative Fuels Initiative, which required the agency to purchase only clean, alternative-fuel buses and phase out dirty diesel buses over the next 20 years. In 2011, the MTA retired its last diesel bus and became the nation’s only major transit agency with a fleet run entirely on alternative fuels. The MTA now has 2,221 buses powered by CNG, as well as one electric bus and six gasoline-electric hybrids. Transit officials estimate that the elimination of diesel engines has reduced the release of cancer-causing particulates from the bus fleet by 80% and greenhouse gases by about 300,000 pounds a day in one of the smoggiest areas of the country.

In 2004, the San Joaquin Valley air district board passed the landmark Indirect Source Review (Rule 9517), the first rule ever to impose fees for new housing developments that indirectly increase emissions by fostering longer commutes. The rule has reduced emissions by 1,245 tons through reduction projects funded by the $9,826,894 in mitigation fees collected to date. This was one of the first major campaign successes for the Valley’s air advocates, prompting the South Coast and Bay Area air districts to adopt similar rules. However, Rule 9517 was legally challenged by developers who had strongly opposed it during the rulemaking process. The air district worked with environmental groups for five years to defend the rule in state and federal courts; it was finally upheld by the Ninth Circuit in late 2010.