Sohn: Ending emissions testing would threaten jobs

Staff photo by Erin O. Smith / A Volkswagen employee wipes down the sides of cars as they pass her on the assembly line at the Volkswagen Assembly Plant last August in Chattanooga. VW could not have built the plant here had Chattanooga not met air pollution standards. And additional assembly lines cannot be added without the city's compliance with air standards.
Staff photo by Erin O. Smith / A Volkswagen employee wipes down the sides of cars as they pass her on the assembly line at the Volkswagen Assembly Plant last August in Chattanooga. VW could not have built the plant here had Chattanooga not met air pollution standards. And additional assembly lines cannot be added without the city's compliance with air standards.

Lonely Planet, which calls itself a leading media company and the world's No. 1 travel guidebook brand, just ranked Chattanooga the nation's third top spot for travel in 2018.

Does anyone think we'd get that kind of accolade with the smog we had before our air got cleaned up?

Not even close - no matter how many downtown revitalizations we managed or how many aquariums we could have built.

But two Tennessee legislators - specifically Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, and Bo Watson, R-Chattanooga -are introducing a bill to scrap vehicle emissions testing in Tennessee.

They say that since Hamilton County is now "in attainment" - bureaucratic words that mean we don't on a regular basis violate the state and nation's air quality controls - our vehicle emissions testing requirement is no longer needed in Hamilton County and five other counties.

They are wrong. Dead wrong.

What's more, ending emissions testing would threaten Chattanooga jobs.

After all, cleaning up our air brought us jobs.

Long-time Chattanoogans will remember when smog regularly hung in the air here so thickly that you couldn't see the mountains from downtown Chattanooga, or the valley from atop those mountains.

The first big step to cleaning up our air was to require local foundries to install scrubbers on their manufacturing units. Some, like the Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant that made TNT until the Vietnam War ended, just went out of business. That was a big help, but it still wasn't enough - which is why the city and county adopted outdoor no-burning policies in certain months and also required car emissions testing to ensure efficient vehicle exhaust systems.

If you don't think we still need efficient vehicle exhaust systems, sit in your closed garage with your vehicle's motor running for a few minutes until your eyes start to water.

No, really, don't do that!

Carbon monoxide is a highly toxic gas produced when fuels burn incompletely. The typical internal combustion engine used in most cars and trucks can produce extremely high concentrations of carbon monoxide and raise concentrations in a closed building to a deadly level in only seven minutes.

Multiply that by at least 275,910. That's how many cars and trucks were registered in Hamilton County in 2016 alone, according to the Hamilton County Clerk's office.

It was 2011 before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at long last said Chattanooga, after decades of trying to clean up its dirty air image, was finally meeting what had proved to be the toughest of our challenges to completely comply with federal clean air standards. That toughest push was meeting the regulations that limit fine-particulate emissions like dust, soot or smoke and the regulations governing ground-level ozone, which comes primarily from vehicle and power plant emissions. Both particle pollution and ground ozone contribute to smog.

It was a monumental turnaround: After all, EPA in 1969 designated Chattanooga as the "dirtiest air" city in the country.

"The private and corporate citizens of Hamilton County again have shown that they can meet any challenge," said Bob Colby, director of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Air Pollution Control Bureau, at the time.

But it was our payoff that was truly sweet. The new designation and clean air meant that new and recruited industry permits no longer had to depend on offset pollution emissions from the reductions or closed doors of other businesses.

It quite literally made the recruitment of our newest major manufacturer, Volkswagen, possible.

Even in 2011, Colby was asked if the breakthrough meant less need for emissions testing and burning bans. Not likely, he said.

"With tighter standards always coming down the pike [from EPA], I don't think that is likely. Certainly not in the near future," he said.

Even today, even in a political era in which standards are not tightening, if our state lawmakers are successful in rolling back Tennessee laws and policies to do away with vehicle emission testing, then Hamilton County (and other counties that use it) will have to find another way to meet the EPA requirements. One of those ways could still be to require existing industries like VW to reduce emissions - even if it means slowing production, not adding new vehicle assembly lines or even closing.

So you decide: What's the better trade-off for clean air - $9 vehicle emissions testing (and sometimes costly auto repairs) or the likelihood of fewer jobs?

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