State Attorney General William Tong is joining his counterparts in New York and New Jersey in calling for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to tighten controls on air pollution emitted by heavy-duty trucks.
In a letter sent to EPA Administrator Michael Regan and National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, Tong, together with New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey Attorney General Andrew Bruck, pushed the EPA to propose more stringent standards for emissions of nitrogen oxides from new on-road heavy-duty trucks and engines for model year 2027 and beyond.
“Heavy-duty trucks are a major driver of air pollution and climate change,” Tong said in a statement. “We are urging the EPA to take swift, strong measures to curb truck pollution and protect public health. Connecticut sits at the end of the tailpipe of our nation’s exhaust fumes, and we cannot protect ourselves from upwind smog without this federal action.”
Nitrogen oxides, known by the abbreviation NOx, are a precursor to ground-level ozone or smog, a long-running problem in heavily-congested cities across the U.S. and especially in New York City. Despite efforts to curb the release of greenhouse gases in the tri-state region, the New York City metro area failed to meet federal air quality standards by a July deadline, meaning the EPA will soon reclassify the region from “serious” nonattainment of smog standards to “severe” nonattainment.
Tong, James and Bruck laid part of the blame on exhaust from out-of-state trucks, and from air pollution from other cities being blown east. The only way to remedy that problem, they said, is a nationally enforced standard that will bring down NOx levels across the country.
Transportation-related emissions have become a major focus for states looking to meet carbon reduction targets over the coming years and decades, but progress has been slow, in part due to the slow adoption of electric vehicles in the U.S. and a dearth of public transit options in much of the country.
A recent review of the sources of Connecticut’s pollution found that transportation in general was the greatest single contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the state, with a larger impact than electricity generation, commercial buildings or industrial operations.
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November 30, 2021 at 09:51PM
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Tong, other AGs call for stricter limits on NOx emissions from heavy-duty trucks - Hartford Business
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