EPA to Rule on California Request to Regulate Transport Refrigeration Units 
 

In recent meetings held with EPA, ATA was informed that the agency will rule on the California’s Air Resources Board’s (CARB) request to implement its regulation against older Transport Refrigeration Units (TRUs) by the end of 2008. Under the federal Clean Air Act, California must receive a “waiver” from EPA before the state can implement and enforce this regulation.
 

Under the regulation, TRUs that are more than seven years old operating in California must be repowered, retrofitted, or replaced in order to reduce particulate matter emissions.  The first phase of the regulation’s tiered implementation schedule is to occur on December 31, 2008.   

ATA took the lead at a January 2006 hearing before EPA, asking the agency to withhold approval of the TRU regulation because of its potentially enormous cost on out-of-state based refrigerated haulers, a cost that will be wholly disproportionate to any benefits associated with emission reductions from engines that may rarely be in the state.  ATA also filed detailed comments with the agency opposing the TRU regulation.  ATA’s participation in the hearing and challenge of the TRU regulation has alerted EPA and CARB that this particular regulation, as well as other California proposals affecting out-of-state trucking equipment, should not be “rubber-stamped” and that every effort to mitigate the effect on non-California equipment must be made. 

Staff Contact:  Mike Tunnell at mtunnell@trucking.org