Cars are rolling into Davis County's new vehicle emissions testing facility even though the center may be violating a county ordinance.
The county this year spent $250,000 to open its new IM240 emissions testing center in March, but the equipment is not working properly. Despite that, the owners of 1989 cars still have to get them tested there rather than go to one of county's 90 private auto repair shops that do emissions testing.An October 1996 county ordinance says testing by private garages "shall continue in full force" until the enhanced emissions testing program is working.
Some repair-shop owners are fuming over the emissions testing situation. They say until IM240 is working, they should be allowed to test 1989 cars just as they do cars manufactured in other years.
"This is a fiasco," said Jeff Deru, owner of Layton Lube and Service. "Look at this. Since (the beginning) they have not been able to get the IM240 working."
When asked about the ordinance and the county's non-functioning IM240 testing program, Gerry Hess of the Davis County Attorney's Office said he would look into it.
Why is Davis County entering the emissions-testing business when private garages have been doing the job for years?
To monitor for NOx (nitrogen oxide) which is one major component of the rising level of ozone contaminants in the air. The testing equipment long used by private garages can't test for NOx.
Although the county has not had a violation of allowable pollution levels mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency, it was forced to create a plan to deal with the rising level of dangerous, low-lying ozone, including more stringent testing of car emissions.
Salt Lake County was in the same fixbut decided to implement a procedure called ASM testing. Equipment for ASM testing costs about $30,000, but it's affordable to most private garages, which still do all testing in Salt Lake County under a so-called "decentralized" system.
Davis County decided to implement IM240 testing. Equipment for IM240 costs $150,000 - an amount not affordable for most private shops. So the county bought the equipment, installed it at its testing center in Kaysville and plans to gradually phase in testing of cars from other years.
Because the county is the sole testing entity with IM240 equipment, its system is referred to by the EPA as "centralized."
In its plan submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency in February 1997, Davis County said its new testing would start in January 1998.
Now, it's more likely IM240 won't start testing on a pass-fail basis until January 1999, said Richard Harvey, Davis County's en-vi-ron-men-tal health director.
Meanwhile, 1989 cars are being tested at the county's Kaysville center using some components of IM240. But until bugs in the system are worked out, no test done at the Kaysville center gives readings for NOx.
Even when the IM240 system is working, some experts doubt the accuracy of the test.
In Colorado, all of the 30,000 cars tested on the IM240 in September 1995 showed a failure rate that tripled when the outside temperatures exceeded 75 degrees Fahrenheit, said Donald Stedman, a chemistry professor at the University of Denver.
Stedman said that this is because a vehicle's gas purging system makes the car run richer as it heats up or idles to get rid of increasing pressure in the gas tank.
The richer performance causes more exhaust fumes and a greater likelihood that the test will fail, he said.
The Utah Department of Environmental Quality modeled the IM240 test and found that it would work in helping Davis County regulate its emissions, said Bill Colbert, environmental scientist with the Division of Air Quality. But, he added, the division does not comment on whether one program is better than another.
One reason Davis County decided to go with a centralized system is that it provides the county with 50 percent more air pollution credits from the EPA, said Harvey. The credits allow the county's pollution index to be above mandated levels without penalty because it shows the county is trying to reduce pollution levels.
But in a 1996 letter to Utah County Commissioner Gary Herbert, Margo T. Oge, director of EPA mobile sources, said decentralized systems in Salt Lake, Davis, Weber and Utah counties may have the same effectiveness as the centralized system and that each county would be notified of this change.
After an 18-month trial testing period now under way in Utah County, the EPA may determine that both centralized and decentralized testing systems will receive equal credits in May 1999, when the trial period ends.
When asked why the county continues to require cars to be tested in the Kaysville center even though NOx cannot be detected with the county's so-called "loaded mode test," Harvey responded that the loaded mode test being used is still more accurate than the private stations' two-speed idle test.
The IM240 test is planned as an interim emissions test in Davis County until a computerized On-Board Diagnostic test used with 1996 and newer vehicles becomes required by the EPA in 2001.