Health district ripped for not using clean-fuel cars

Launce Rake and Ed Koch

Friday, Dec. 8, 2000 | 10:47 a.m.

A longtime member of a key air-pollution board today charged that the agency entrusted with protecting air quality is failing to use clean-fuel cars in its own fleet.

Jack Greco, vice chairman of the Air Pollution Control Hearing Board, said the Clark County Health District is "playing smoke and mirrors" by purchasing and using vehicles that burn reformulated gasoline rather than cleaner-burning natural gas or propane.

Greco also charged that the health district and the Clark County School District, which use the reformulated gas and a special diesel fuel for most of their fleets, are evading the intent of state law that requires clean-burning fuels for all local government agencies.

Environmentalists say the reformulated gas and diesel fuel don't improve air quality and the agencies using the alternative fuels are taking advantage of a loophole in state law and are not setting the standards needed to clean up the valley's pollution.

Administrators with the health district deny the charges.

Ron Smolinski, a health district project manager who works extensively with the county's alternative-fuels project, said the reformulated gas and special diesel not only fulfill the legal obligation for alternative fuels, but burn much cleaner than the standard fuels.

But Greco said the health and school districts should be doing more to use natural gas and propane.

"They are circumventing the law by doing things like passing off filthy diesel fuel as cleaner-burning alternative fuels like compressed natural gas and propane -- fuels that studies have shown can reduce carbon monoxide by as much as 70 percent," he said. "In an area that is in serious non-compliance (for federal air-quality standards), this is despicable and embarrassing."

He said some local agencies, including the city of Las Vegas, Clark County and the Regional Transportation Commission, which runs the CAT bus service, are doing a good job of getting natural gas and propane vehicles into their fleets.

Health district records show that between 1994 and last year the school district purchased no buses that run on natural gas, while the Regional Transportation Commission purchased 77 buses running on natural gas during the same period.

The school and health districts also run hundreds of vehicles using the reformulated gas, which is trucked in from Arizona and used for six months, from Oct. 1 through March 31. Those months are the worst for the production of potentially dangerous smog and ozone.

For air quality, Greco said, the reformulated gas is little better than the ordinary gas available at the corner gas station.

Officials defended both the reformulated gas and "clean" diesel, which is produced up to standards set in California.

Dr. Donald Kwalick, the health district's top administrator, said his agency is still working to quantify the environmental benefits of reformulated gas.

Smolinski said it is significantly cleaner than the gas available at the regular pump, even the special oxygenated gas available during the winter months to consumers in the Las Vegas Valley.

The gas is approved by the state government, the Environmental Protection Agency and the health district, school district spokeswoman Mary Stanley-Larsen said.

Greco said he will introduce a resolution at a Dec. 14 hearing that calls on local agencies to begin testing their tailpipe emissions if they use the reformulated gas -- local agencies are now exempted from the requirement, which applies to personal and commercial vehicles.

Greco also calls on the state to remove diesel fuel from the "alternative fuel" designation, and calls on local agencies to replace diesel-burning vehicles with ones using natural gas or propane.

Greco is a 12-year member of the hearing board, which is independent of the health board. Staff members for the health district advise both agencies.

The hearing board rules on companies that have been cited for violating health district pollution rules. The board also recommends policies to the full health board.

The resolution would go to the health board, which then could pass on the recommendations to the state and to its own staff.

Greco, a former gasoline retailer and founder of a gas retailers association, also is a member of a three-person team charged with oversight of an ongoing audit. The audit, ordered by a state legislative subcommittee, is of the troubled emissions credit program administered by the health district's Air Pollution Control Division.

His criticism extends to the emissions-credit program, which has been the target of sometimes harsh criticism from environmentalists.

The special diesel fuel used by the school district is subsidized by Reliant Energy Power Generation of Houston, which according to Smolinski bought 4.8 million gallons for the schools in exchange for emissions credits needed to build a Boulder City electricity generating plant.

The company also has announced plans to build other power plants in the Las Vegas area, which will require some emissions credits from other sources. Although the plants use natural gas to produce electricity, they still put tons of pollutants into the air.

But the program to buy cleaner diesel for the school district is designed to more than offset the pollutants from the power plants. Smolinski said the cleaner-burning diesel cut fine airborne dust by up to 20 percent, 50 percent of sulfur dioxide pollution and 7 percent of nitrous oxides, which help form ozone.

Greco said the offsets, however, are based "on contrived and convoluted reasoning."

On one issue all sides agree: Natural gas and propane-fueled vehicles are the cleanest of all.

Kwalick said that new vehicles that the health district purchases will use natural gas or propane.

"We certainly should be setting the example" by buying and using the cleanest burning vehicles available, he said.

But in past years that has been difficult because of the $410,000 to $20,000 cost of retrofitting vehicles for natural gas or propane, he said.

Now, however, natural gas vehicles are coming steadily from automobile manufacturers, and there are more places to refuel when necessary, Kwalick said.

School district officials used similar reasoning for their reliance on diesel.

"To purchase school buses that run on compressed natural gas will cost one-third more than diesel buses," Larsen said. "In a year where we purchase 100 buses, it would add about $3 million more in costs above diesel."

The use of reformulated gas and diesel as "alternative fuels" has been a thorn in the side of environmentalists.

The gas "definitely would not be what we would call an alternative fuel," said Jessica Hodge, a Las Vegas organizer for the Sierra Club.

"It is a cleaner burning type of gasoline, but it is not an alternative fuel," she said.

The group also opposed the state's inclusion of cleaner-burning diesel as an alternative fuel, Hodge said.

Hodge said the use of the gas and diesel were loopholes in the state law.