If you live in the Treasure Valley, your vehicle emissions tests are going away. Why?
As state and federal authorities move away from vehicle emissions testing, Boise is also taking steps to stop requiring cars to have their exhaust checked regularly.
The change comes as other areas around the country have also nixed the requirements, citing improving car technologies and better overall air quality.
Last year, the Idaho Legislature removed state requirements to test vehicle emissions in the Treasure Valley, which had been in place for decades. Local cities also have local laws implementing the testing programs, which also need to be removed to undo the requirements.
In December, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality proposed to the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal agency tasked with enforcing clean air, that EPA remove testing requirements in Ada County, according to a memorandum from a Boise city attorney to the Boise City Council for a meeting on Jan. 26. Federal testing requirements have been in place for Ada County since 1984, and state requirements have mandated the tests in Canyon County and Kuna since 2008.
But since the 1980s, the area has not exceeded the air quality requirements.
EPA removal is expected. So the state plans to end its testing requirement in the Treasure Valley on July 1, the same date that Boise’s law will sunset, thanks to a measure the council passed on Feb. 7. While the state required the tests, it’s been up to locales to implement them.
“In the late ’80s, everybody’s driving cars made in the ’80s and ’70s,” Patrick Bageant, a Boise City Council member,told the Statesman. Bageant is a member of the Ada County Air Quality Board, which was started to monitor carbon monoxide. “Thirty years since that time, vehicle technology has changed, and the air quality here has drastically improved from a carbon monoxide perspective.”
“The emissions testing, it’s just not moving the needle on what’s coming out of tailpipes on the road anymore,” Bageant said.
He said the EPA is “almost certain” to agree that emissions testing is no longer needed in the area. A response from the EPA is expected by June.
Dave Luft, air quality manager for the Boise region at DEQ, told the Statesman that 89% of vehicles pass the emissions test on the first try. For most cars these days, the test doesn’t actually measure emissions. Rather, it checks to make sure the car’s emissions system is working properly, he said.
In recent years, the region’s worst carbon monoxide levels over an eight-hour span have been between 1.5 and 2 parts per million, and the standard is 9 parts per million, Luft said.
“The modeling that we did shows that we expected that air quality will continue to improve and that the overall pollutants in the area will continue to decline,” Lufe said. “They’re just not going to decline quite as fast.”
He noted that “natural” occurrences, like smoky summer days from nearby wildfires, are generally excluded from the monitoring data, because they are considered to be out of a local authority’s control.
That makes wildfire smoke irrelevant to emissions testing, but it remains relevant to the quality of the air Valley dwellers breathe and to your health. Research from the University of Utah anticipates the effects wildfires have on air quality in the Mountain West will worsen in the coming years. Scientists also have linked increases in the frequency and intensity of wildfires to climate change.
Other states, including Washington and Tennessee, have ended similar testing programs in recent years.
Already, certain vehicles are exempted from the testing requirements, including hybrids and cars less than 4 years old. Electric vehicles, which do not emit pollutants, are also expected to increase quickly on roads. Federal law gives buyers tax breaks to buy electric cars.
Jonathan Oppenheimer, the external relations director at the Idaho Conservation League, told the Statesman that vehicles are getting cleaner, and that progress on air pollution has been made.
He said the Conservation League is most concerned that the Boise area is approaching some of the trigger limits for ozone, a health hazard. Ozone, the main ingredient in smog, forms when pollutants from cars and other emitters chemically react with each other at low altitudes, according to the EPA.
Luft said the Treasure Valley’s ozone levels are at about 62 parts per billion, and the national requirements are that they stay below 70 parts per billion. Modeling from the Department of Environmental Quality indicated that the emissions testing program reduces ozone pollution by 0.5 parts per billion. Going forward, that reduction is expected to shrink.
“As newer, cleaner vehicles continue to replace older more polluting vehicles, the effectiveness of an emission testing program continues to decrease,” Luft said.
He added that the benefits of the testing programs are “not that significant” anymore, and so the Legislature decided to end testing.
“If the cost outweighs the benefit, then it’s probably not worth doing,” he said.
This story was originally published February 25, 2023 at 4:00 AM.
