Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome.
By 1992, some of the worst air polluted cities in the nation could be breeding of it
easier, the result of an historic precedent-setting agreement between the federal government, gas
and oil industry representatives and environmental groups.
Clean fuels this time on the Environment Show stay with us.
So this time, Engineering Professor Frank Wicks finds that gas savings from proper tire
inflation is more than twice that estimated by the Department of Energy.
It is about a 230,000 barrel per day penalty as a result of underinflated tires to put
that in perspective if they open up a new section of the North Bank of Alaska for grilling
the sensitive wildlife area.
That's about the amount of oil they get out of there.
Some of the stories we'll cover for you this time on the Environment Show stay tuned.
The Environment Show is a national production made possible by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New
York.
And this is Bruce Robertson.
It took over 12 years for congressional leaders to agree on wording of legislation to reauthorize
the federal clean air bill.
President Bush signed the sweeping measure into law last November.
It took only five months for a coalition as broad as that which fought over the clean
air bill to reach an agreement on a key program mandated by that legislation.
Recently, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the federal Department of Energy,
several major oil companies, two leading environmental groups and representatives of state agencies.
Thirty groups in all signed and announced an agreement to establish a clean automobile
fuels program for major cities across the nation.
Donald Singer is assistant director of the Office of Mobile Sources at the United States
Environmental Protection Agency in Washington and one of the negotiators of the agreement.
Well, it was really a historic agreement to get all of the parties that were affected
by this particular provision of the Clean Air Act to agree in principle to what the regulations
will look like.
It's historic in two ways.
One is that for the first time really addresses the concept of having cleaner burning fuels
for all of our cars and trucks to go along with the cleaner vehicles that we require from
the vehicle control side.
And secondly, it's historic from getting all of the parties to agree in a relatively short
period of time on an extremely complex technical and legal regulation.
The program actually comes in two parts, targeting two problems.
Cities with above-regulation carbon monoxide levels, especially during winter months when
cold temperatures exacerbate and already on healthy condition, will be required to
sell and use oxygenated gasoline during the winter months.
This requirement will become effective in 1992.
In areas with above-regulation ozone levels, reformulated gasoline will be required.
Beginning in 1995, this program will target the nine dirtiest metropolitan regions in the
country.
Again, Don Zinger at EPA.
The law lays out a recipe for reformulation.
It includes the addition of 2 percent of oxygen by weight to the gasoline.
It also requires that the benzene content of gasoline be reduced.
Today's gasoline is on the order of about 2 percent benzene on average.
The law requires it must be reduced in those cities to 1 percent.
And then it also, in addition, the gasoline overall must be 15 percent less polluting from
an ozone or a small standpoint than 1990 gasoline.
And also must be 15 percent lower in the production of toxic pollutants than 1990 gasoline.
So those last two are performance standards and the oil industry can meet those in any
way they see fit.
The law just lays out the performance requirements and then each refinery can figure out what they
must do to reformulate their gas to meet those requirements.
How will the reformulated gas itself translate into lower emissions from the tailpipe?
Well, there's two ways that happens.
The addition of the oxygenate is the first part.
Adding oxygen to gasoline causes the combustion in the film there to be leaner.
In other words, have more air.
And that causes the tailpipe emissions to be lower than they would with conventional gasoline.
Then the other part of it is the actual reformulation of the chemical composition, the lowering
of the benzene as well as the other reformulation which most likely will be to
reduce the volatility of the gasoline which is its tendency to evaporate in hot weather.
By doing that they can also reduce not only the tailpipe emissions but also the evaporative
vapors that escape from cars in hot weather even when they're sitting in a parking lot
not running.
The new regulations call for a 15 percent reduction in emissions.
During the negotiations one of the items of disagreement had to do with what baseline was
being used 15 percent below the current level or 15 percent below the levels specified
by the new clean air bill.
Coming out of the negotiations the new regulations call for an additional 15 percent below clean
air levels.
Dr. Terry Yosey, Vice President for Health and Environment at the American Petroleum Institute
in Washington and one of the signatories explains how the program will be administered and
monitored.
Also as part of this agreement we are developing with EPA and with the other parties that were
involved in the agreement procedures for assuring compliance.
What that will lead to are surveys of gasoline that are actually marketed at various service
stations in order to determine that the specifications in the clean air act regulations are being
met.
So every period of months samples will be taken at service stations to determine that the
gasoline that's being marketed will in fact comply with the terms of the agreement.
So this is not a trust me type situation that this will be an independent evaluation
by which the regulators and environmental groups ourselves will all participate and everybody
will be able to see the data and for those companies that do not sell gasoline that
complies with this agreement they will be required to make even further reductions in
the next marketing season.
There is a number of concerns about compliance with these new regulations.
Yosey though believes there will be little chance or incentive for motorists to cheat on
the new law even if there is a slight price hike as a result of the new law.
I really think that there's a very minimal chance that people are going to be able to go
outside these nine major metropolitan areas and by other kind of fuel because first of
all these areas really don't just cover the city of Limeritz they cover the whole metropolitan
area.
So if you're in Chicago or if you're in Los Angeles if you're in Baltimore if you're in Hartford
Connecticut if you're in Milwaukee you're going to have to go a pretty fur piece to go
out into the rural hinterland to buy other kinds of gasoline and I don't think most consumers
are going to be willing to make that effort because they're going to find a more convenient
to buy the gasoline near where they live.
The last point I would make here is that gasoline that will be sold outside of these dirty
areas will not be allowed to deteriorate beyond the levels in 1990.
There are specific provisions in the air to make sure that gasoline that will be sold
outside the metropolitan area of Milwaukee for example will not deteriorate.
So I think those are all the safeguards in the system and I think it leads to it led
us to the belief that this agreement is not only good for the industry and good for the
environment it's good for the consumer and good for the country.
The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club represented the environmental
co-ulation in the talks.
Blake Early an air pollution specialist with the Sierra Club describes more of the
wrangling over the 15% reduction.
When you're talking about taking 15% reduction the first question is 15% of what?
Reduction from what?
What's the starting point?
And the oil industry in the environmental community had a different starting point.
The law was somewhat ambiguous as to where the starting point was because elsewhere in
the Clean Air Act that was passed in November of 1990 there are other reductions of pollutants
that are required and so the question was do you take the 15% prior to taking the other
reductions or after?
If you do it prior then essentially the law appears to contain duplicative requirements
and our argument was that Congress didn't intend to mandate the same reductions in two
different parts of the law then then consecutive reductions, not simultaneous reductions.
Ultimately the oil industry agreed with our starting point and the exchange was we allow
those reductions to be calculated on average rather than on a per gallon basis so that gasoline
when sampled across the country in the nine cities across the country on average has to
make me a 15% reduction but that doesn't mean that each individual gallon will necessarily
mean 15% some gallons might be high, other gallons would be low.
As we mentioned the agreement is being hailed not only for its achievements in providing
the cleaner fuels but as well for the process by which the agreement was reached.
Known as regulatory negotiations or regnags such talks often start with the law being proposed
by one party for example the EPA but end up in litigation with one or more of the affected
parties suing over interpretations and applications of the law.
This time the law was actually formed with all who would be affected taking part in the
writing of the law.
Included in the document is an agreement not to disagree any further in the future.
Dr. Yosey at API speculates on why the agreement was reached in this way at this time.
Well I think there are at least two reasons.
One is that all of these groups had been through the very long and almost torturous legislative
process that led up to the Clean Air Act amendments being passed last year by the Congress.
That was a process that went on over ten years and I don't think any of these groups really
had a desire to bloody each other in another round as EPA had to implement this statute.
So nobody was really spoiling for a fight.
Secondly I think the legislative process reached some decisions about cleaner air, cleaner
fuels so that when each of these groups took a look at the statute and looked at its own
goals and relationship to the other parties.
A lot of us concluded that we had a lot of the same goals and by sitting across the table
and talking through these issues both technically but also more broadly we came to the conclusion
with groups that oftentimes disagree with us in the past.
We came to the conclusion that there were a lot of things that we had in common and I
think that sense of common goals and a common commitment to cleaner air really is what
carried the day.
Blake Early at the Sierra Club.
The advantage from the environmental community standpoint is that it reduces the likelihood
that the regulation will be delayed through litigation and otherwise so that we will get
cleaner gasoline sooner than would have been normally the case if industry had challenged
it in court for instance.
The advantage to the industry is that the rules of the game are established five years
before they're due.
This program doesn't go into effect until 1995 and so they have a higher degree of certainty
and they can plan.
They can do the advanced plan they need to do in whatever capital construction they may
need to do.
I think it was because both sides really had an interest in settling this matter sooner
rather than later that the negotiation was able to work.
Zinger at the EPA says the negotiations carried for two reasons.
First, Congress had already spelled out most of the conditions and requirements.
There was not a lot of latitude.
Secondly, we had a very tight deadline to meet even though the reformulated gasoline program
does not begin until 1995.
That is not much time when you are an oil refinery and you have to make some major redesign
of your refinery before that in order to produce this gasoline by 1995.
The oil industry had a big incentive to achieve certainty early on so that they knew exactly
what they were required to meet so they could go ahead and make those capital investments
that were needed.
I think those two key pieces were necessary to bring all the parties together and realize
that this was the best way to go.
Each party had something to gain in the process and something to lose by not going through
the process.
Finally, what will this mean for us as motorists?
Well, there is a good chance that the average car driver will never notice any difference
whatsoever starting in November of 1992 and for the wintertime program and then in January
of 1995, all gasoline sold in those targeted cities will be this new type of gasoline.
But the motorists probably won't notice a difference.
Certainly not in the performance of the vehicle and nor in the fuel economy of the vehicle.
The only difference could be in the pump price.
The rest of the cost of these reformulations may add as much as 4 to 5 cents a gallon
to the pump price.
But there is a good chance that it would be substantially lower than that given that
the oil industry has a number of years to do some additional research trying to find a
cheaper way of reformulating this gasoline.
So the only difference could be a slight increase in pump price.
Donald Zinger, assistant director of mobile sources at the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Los Angeles metropolitan area leads the nation in both carbon monoxide and ozone pollution.
It is at the top of the list of the nine worst cities, a list that includes Baltimore,
Chicago, Hartford, Connecticut, Houston, Milwaukee, New York, Philadelphia, and San Diego.
The list of 41 cities posting non-attainment of carbon monoxide levels includes not only
Los Angeles, as mentioned, but other unlikely areas as Albuquerque, Anchorage, Winston-Salem,
North Carolina, Memphis, Tennessee, Mizzoula, Montana, Provo, Utah, Seattle, Washington,
Syracuse, New York, and Washington, D.C.
This is Bruce Robertson.
And now we'll look ahead to next week.
A year ago, the United States Department of Energy launched an advertising campaign to
get all of us motorists to maintain proper tire pressure in our automobiles.
The department said that proper tire pressure could save the nation up to 100,000 barrels
of oil a day, just from this one improvement.
Well, Frank Wicks, an engineering professor at Union College in Schenectady, New York,
pleasantly disagrees.
The Secretary of Energy, Watkins last summer estimated there's 100,000 barrels of oil per
day lost due to underinflated tires in the country.
It's about 1% of total oil consumption.
We've actually found out the situation is more than twice that bad.
It is about a 230,000 barrel per day penalty as a result of underinflated tires to put
that in perspective of they opened up a new section of the North Bank of Alaska for
drilling the sensitive wildlife area.
That's about the amount of oil they get out of there so they're in principle.
We can get that much oil out of conservation rather than out of production.
Next week we'll find out more about the study that led to this conclusion and learn more
what we can do and what else Professor Wicks is recommending.
That's next week on the Environment Show.
We hope you'll be listening.
Environmental problems are often tackled by one researcher at a time.
They may read other studies but their expertise only offers relief for a small part of the
puzzle.
We'll now, three universities in North Carolina have combined their resources to help the
environment.
Duke University, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
actually have been working together for more than 20 years.
Dr. Malcolm Gillis is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Duke University.
He says that not only is the recent joint effort a natural progression for the schools,
it is the best way to deal with environmental problems.
You've got to have all these talents and more to try to tackle some of the problems that
we're trying to tackle on tropical deforestation, on severe environmental pollution in eastern
Europe and particularly Hungary and Czechoslovakia and Poland.
It's too important to leave to economists.
It's too important to leave to environmental scientists.
It's too important to leave to public health officials by themselves.
I've public health scholars by themselves.
You need a concerted approach to these problems.
As it happens, those have developed.
These complemented strengths have developed over the last 25 or 30 years on the campuses
of the three universities.
And there are very few artificial barriers for collaboration.
The result is the Center for World Environment and Sustainable Development.
Gillis is also chair of the Center's Board of Trustees.
He says cooperation between the universities in the past led to a natural partnership
now.
For instance, Duke has strong departments in botany, zoology and public policy relating
to the environment.
North Carolina State has a school of forestry and has led many studies on agriculture and
tropical soils.
The University of North Carolina often takes the social science angle, with studies in
public health and population research.
The Center's executive officer, Dr. Isabel Valencia, says it all started with Duke
primatologist Patricia Wright, who discovered a rare breed of lemur on the African island
of Madagascar.
Wright feared that leveling the country's rainforests were threatening the monkey-like
mammal's existence, so Wright called on her contacts for help.
Soil scientists and forestry professors became involved, and they called public health experts
and sociologists.
Before they knew there was this network of friends, scientists were friends from the
university looking to get their display and there was considerable interest in the
part outside, the people who, the kinds of people that they know in the other institutions.
And they decided to form a little bit of more formal thing, and they started talking to
the deans.
And so the faculty convinced the deans that they wanted to have a center to work, or
even if it's the first idea was in tropical conservation and sustainable agriculture.
The tropical forests of Madagascar provided the Center's first project.
Farmers there are cutting down the trees to plant crops, however the soil is poor.
So professors and students are helping them implement an agroforestry plan, consisting
of trees and crops sharing the same space, agroforestry is considered less erosive and
better for soil quality.
The Center helped create a national park in the area.
But in addition, the needs of the people have to be addressed.
Instead of farming the researchers are encouraging new trades, like tour guides through the park,
and they have supported cooperatives to sell traditional crafts.
Valencia says the Center may work for the environment, but sustainable development of
the people is just as important.
There are certain uses of the forest that have been traditional.
What is happening is people were abandoned on these things.
There was population pressure, and as population pressure increases, people caught more and
more of the trees.
And tourists come and tourists like the lamers for example, and they may start taking lamers
to sell to the people.
This is happening in many tropical countries.
And so we're trying to prevent that, we're trying to help the people find ways of sustainable
livelihood with sound and agriculture systems, and to protect the forests at the same time
and the animals.
Valencia says the local people may not understand the scientists' concerns, but they see around
them.
They look around them and they know that their parents and grandparents have forests and
they, many times, have religions and beliefs that come with stories, certainly verbal tradition
or altradition, and which is forced are very much part.
And they can see the change, and they can see the change in weather patterns, and they
know that it's due to their trees, and they like the animals.
I want to settle down meetings in which the people told us we really want the park, we
really want to conserve our forest.
Tell us where these, tell us where the boundaries of these parks are because we don't want
to cut the trees in the park and help us find ways not to have to cut the trees, help us
find only ways of agriculture.
Yeah, people definitely want to protect the park and the animals.
The center has three areas of interest, tropical conservation and development, the environment
in industrializing countries, and global warming.
In addition to helping several tropical regions, the center is working with Eastern European
countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Funding for the Madagascar project came from the US Agency for International Development.
The schools themselves also provided some financial help.
In the future, both private and public funding will be sought.
There are 140 professors at the universities who do work that relates to the environment.
With such a vast human resource pool, many environmental problems may be approached in
their entirety for the first time.
This is Bruce Robertson.
Our piece on the center for world environment and sustainable development was written and
produced by Karen Kelly.
Well, that's our show for this week.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Environment Show.
Next week, notes from a trip to the Bearing Straits, an international Soviet US coalition
working to establish an international park and wildlife preserve on both sides of the
Straits.
The question is, how will developments within the Soviet government affect this accord?
Well, the story will be tracking for you next week on the Environment Show.
We hope you'll be listening.
Well, the Environment Show is a program about the environment, the air, water, soil, wildlife,
and people of our common habitat.
If you know of something happening in your area that you think we ought to know about, or
if you have a question about this week's or any week's Environment Show, feel free to
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The Environment Show is made possible by the JM Kaplan Fund of New York.
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