The American Trucking Assn. (ATA) yesterday hand-delivered a letter to the EPA asking the agency to reconsider its final rule establishing emissions standards for model year 2004 heavy-duty class diesel engines and its final rule reaffirming the heavy-duty diesel engine standards.
ATA said the petition is based on new information concerning reliability and maintenance issues, energy impacts and life-cycle costs.
ATA requests in the letter to EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman that the agency withdraw the 2004 rule for heavy-duty diesel engines and commence a rulemaking to revise the emissions standards, giving appropriate consideration to cost and energy factors using the best and most current information.
ATA said it believes EPA incorrectly estimated the costs of the engine itself, the fuel economy penalty associated with the new engine technology, the increased maintenance costs, questions of reliability, the reduction in the residual value of the truck and adverse economic impacts upon the trucking industry and small businesses.
Changes in these facts have resulted in a rule that overstates the total amount of emissions that will be reduced and grossly underestimates the costs associated with the claimed emissions reductions, ATA said.
"Based upon this new information, we believe that the costs associated with this rule far outweigh the benefits that will be realized and that the legal and factual premises for the 2004 rule must now be considered fundamentally flawed," ATA said in the letter.
