The regulation ensures that virtually all smog-producing vapors do not leak out of underground tanks, pumps and nozzles. The rule would reduce emissions by the equivalent of taking 450,000 cars off the road every day, according to the agency, which approved [image-nocss] the regulation in 2000.
"With millions of Californians out of work and businesses struggling to hold on, we must be extremely cautious in implementing new environmental regulations that can hurt families, consumers and small businesses," the governor wrote in a letter to CARB chairperson Mary Nichols obtained by the newspaper.
The agency faces mounting resistance from business interests and owners such as gasoline retailers over several regulations that would come at a cost, but this is the first time the governor, who regularly touts his environmental credentials, has sought a delay, the report said.
As reported in CSP Daily News, hundreds of stations around California could choose to shut down rather than comply with a state mandate that would require owners to purchase new equipment to reduce vapor emissions at the pump. Some 40% of stations in the state have installed the vapor-capturing systems and there are about 11,000 stations in California subject to the rule, according to CARB. Another 40% have obtained permits for the work, said the report. (Click here for previous CSP Daily News coverage.)
Station owners have been lobbying the governor and the state legislature to delay the new rule, citing the slow production of technology needed to comply and the inability to obtain financing to pay for the changes. The needed equipment costs about $11,000 per pump, said the report.
Schwarzenegger also called on legislative leaders to draft legislation to help station owners finance the necessary upgrades and an "enforcement holiday" of one year in which owners could not be fined or shut down as long as they showed "good faith" to make the changes.
The governor did not say how he thought the state should pay for such a program. Dimitri Stanich, a spokesman for the air board, told the paper that agency staff was reviewing the governor's letter and would work with regional air districts in the state to extend next week's deadline "while still striving to meet our collective air quality goals."
"It's a very appropriate postponement," Dennis DeCota, executive director of the California Service Station & Automotive Repair Association, told the Chronicle.
A coalition of leading environmental groups strongly opposed any delay in the regulation. "California must not bend to pressure from a small number of gasoline station owners who are using the current economic situation as an excuse to undermine an important control measure that has been on the books for almost a decade," leaders of Sierra Club California, the American Lung Association of California and other groups wrote in a letter to the governor and legislature, cited by the paper.
Station owners warned that with fines ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars a day for noncompliance, many stations would simply close.
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