Some 1,400 of the SCAQMD's sites have not yet responded. About 12,000 dispensing facilities will be affected statewide.
The requirement, Phase II in the state's Enhanced Vapor Recovery Program, is set to go into effect in April. It requires station owners to individually purchase tens of thousands of dollars of equipment designed to prevent harmful vapors from escaping into the air when gasoline is pumped. But smaller retailers say that the requirement puts an unfair burden on businesses that do not sell enough gasoline to offset the extra cost, and that do not contribute much to the problem in the first place.
Among them is George Fasching, who after 31 years of selling gasoline at Fasching's Car Wash in Arcadia, stopped in December. "I came to the decision that I was too small a volume operator to continue on with the expenses imposed by the bureaucracy of the state," he told the paper.
The new requirements would have cost him $35,000, he said. Fasching used to sell the gasoline as a convenience for his car wash customers, and blames the new regulations for forcing him to stop. "It will have some effect on my business, but at least I have the relief that I don't have to deal with these people anymore," he said.
And the new regulations promise to cut what are known as reactive organic gas emissions by 7 tons per day statewide, but opponents point to the fact that California produces 2,322 tons of such gases per day.
CARB officials believe the requirement is a manageable and necessary cost to curb air pollution and smog and to protect public health. "We do calculate the cost of compliance with the regulation as related to emissions," Stanich told the paper. "These costs could be recovered by raising gasoline prices by an average 0.68 cents per gallon."
Cost-effectiveness for the whole EVR program was estimated at $5.24 per pound of emissions, he added.
Anything under $10 per pound is generally considered cost-efficient, said the report. Lower-volume sellers would have to raise prices more to offset costs, according to Stanich.Yesterday, CSP Daily News reported that hundreds of stations around the state of Florida may be forced to shutdown because of a new insurance regulation that requires them to have a double-walled underground gasoline storage tank by the end of the year. (Click here for coverage.)
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