As the new home of OSPIRG's environmental work, Environment Oregon can be contacted regarding this news release.SALEM—Notably
absent from the final actions of the 2005 Oregon Legislature was a
provision blocking Oregon’s environmental agencies from adopting new
air pollution regulations for cars and light trucks. Automakers and
auto dealers attempted, right up until the final hours of the
legislature, to insert language setting up roadblocks for a Clean Cars
program into a bill expanding the use of biofuels. That bill failed to
pass in part because leaders in the House insisted on including the
provision, which Senate leaders, including Senator Ryan Deckert
(D-Beaverton), had said was non-negotiable.
“In
its final hours, the Senate leadership said no to Detroit and yes to a
clean energy future for Oregon’s environment and Oregon’s economy,”
said Jeremiah Baumann, a clean energy advocate for OSPIRG. “The auto
industry has the technology now to cut global warming pollution – it’s
time to bring cleaner cars to Oregon.”
Just
over a week ago, the auto industry started to make headway in blocking
the program when a provision was included in the budget for the
Department of Environmental Quality that forbids that agency from
adopting the Clean Cars program. The budget was narrowly approved as
part of the comprehensive budget deal negotiated over the course of
weeks by legislative leadership, but Governor Kulongoski said a
line-item veto of the measure was certain.
The
Clean Cars program, already enacted by eight other states, would
require that automakers reduce global warming pollution, as well as
emissions of toxic and smog-forming pollution, from cars and light
trucks. The program would also require that a minimum number of
advanced-technology low-emissions cars, such as hybrids, be sold in
Oregon. Washington has decided to adopt the program, but the program
will only be implemented when Oregon does the same, so the auto
industry has made Oregon a focus of its lobbying efforts.
Attention
now shifts to the Governor, who has said he supports the program. He is
expected to form a workgroup that will spend several months examining
the Clean Cars issue and how it could be adopted in Oregon. Governor
Kulongoski will then decide whether to have the Environmental Quality
Commission initiate a rulemaking to adopt the standards by the end of
the year.
