CAR POLLUTION:EPA’s Lyin’ & Cheatin Continues

The USEPA has produced a thoroughly dishonest response to a series of questions asked it by Cong. David McIntosh (8/10/99) about the Transp Partners Program (TPP), the vehicle the agency has used for the last several years for campaigning against roads, and for funneling money to anti-roads activists. This is a 24-page document addressed to McIntosh as chair of the House committee covering EPA with a cover letter (9/27/99) from Richard T. Farrell, associate administrator, Office of Policy and Reinvention [Really!] (Square brackets are my comments.)

Most important perhaps was McIntosh’s question (Q1b) as to the statutory authority for the EPA’s stated objective of reducing vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) by automobile and its discouragement of road construction. The response (A1b) asserts that reducing VMT is “an official goal of United States Government policy” and claims this is stated in the clean air act, the climate change action plan [Not a statute], and the CMAQ programs of ISTEA and TEA21. There follow almost nine pages of excerpts from supposedly relevant parts of these statutes.

In not one of these cited passages of statutes is reduction of VMT mentioned as an objective or policy. In each of them reduced VMT is mentioned as one means to be considered by states or cities in pursuit of cleaner air. In all the cited passages the statutes leave it up to the states and cities involved to decide whether to implement reduced VMT, or other alternative measures to gain cleaner air.

Nowhere is reduced VMT statutorily authorized as a goal or policy in its own right. The EPA simply ignores McIntosh’s question about the statutory authority for the agency’s opposition to road construction. Apparently because there is none.

McIntosh asks (Q3a) whether the TPP has been discontinued. “Discontinued,” answers the EPA (A3a). But then a page later (A4 p13) it protests that EPA “cannot unilaterally terminate its existing cooperative agreements with the nine TPP principal partners” [the essence of TPP] unless it finds the partners non-compliant with their agreements, so these programs will continue until their expiry. In reality the TPP has not been “discontinued” but will run on until the expiry of existing multi-year grant programs. An honest answer would be that the TPP program is being “wound down” or “phased out.”

Given that DOE data show no significant difference between energy use per passenger-mile in autos vs transit, McIntosh asked (Q9) why EPA assumed that a mode shift autos-to-transit would reduce overall US energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA answer (A9) asserts that a mode shift “can” provide more miles of travel per unit of energy consumed. Sure, if people were to leave their cars at home and pack more tightly into the existing stock of buses and trains. But this is not what has been happening, or is likely to happen. EPA and its friends have been pressing with some success to increase the supply of transit service as measured by seat-miles provided. The result has been falling load factors - fewer passenger-miles per seat-mile and higher energy consumption on transit per passenger-mile, so that there is no energy-savings (or greenhouse gas reductions) from a mode shift away from cars. EPA ignores that inconvenient fact. It then makes an unexplained assertion of savings of 43 trillion Btus (A9). They must have got their sign wrong because any mode shift to transit on these numbers would have to increase, not save, energy use.

EPA’s answer #A11 misrepresents a bunch of research studies to conclude that adding road capacity is quite ineffective in reducing congestion, when in fact the studies say that there is latent demand in congested areas, which will offset some or most, but not all, of the increased capacity and so limit the alleviation of congestion. The NRC’s “Curbing Gridlock” report, for example, is misrepresented by EPA as reflecting a “consensus among transp economists” against adding more road capacity when that report focuses on the potential benefits of variable road pricing, and merely says that by itself capacity enhancement sufficient to eliminate congestion is unlikely to be economically or politically feasible. A very reasonable and moderate position by the NRC panel is misrepresented by EPA as an extreme anti-road position. And it is doubly misrepresented as a “consensus” of transp economists that the report nowhere claims to be.

The EPA was asked by McIntosh (Q12) to justify its claim that vehicle-caused pollution “doubles periodically in most metropolitan areas.” A TEA21 workgroup consisting of senior EPA officials had asserted this regular “doubling” of pollution. In fact of course, far from regularly doubling, vehicle caused pollution has been declining, according to the EPA’s own statistics. EPA’s answer to McIntosh (A12a/b) does not contest these facts or that they controvert the TEA21 Workgroup scaremongering, but instead goes off on a hypothetical tangent: “Holding average fleet fuel efficiency constant, continuing growth in the amount of VMT in metro areas can [Note the conditional or hypothetical sense] result in a doubling of CO2 emissions during the same time period that the amount of VMT doubles. In addition to the extent that the amount of other pollutants is directly proportional to VMT [A hypothetical relationship since historically it has been far less than directly proportional] pollution associated with automobile use can [That fudge verb again] double again during the same period.”

Tautology

Of course in the absence of any improvement in average vehicle emissions per VMT emissions WILL rise proportionately with VMT. That’s a tautology. But, in the real world of American automobiles, emissions are declining as lower emitting vehicles take the place of dirtier vehicles being scrapped. The clear history of vehicle emissions is of decline, not the regular “doubling” of EPA’s outrageous misrepresentation of air quality’s recent history in its TEA21 Workgroup report.

McIntosh asked (Q12a) for a listing of metro areas in which vehicle-caused pollution had doubled and got this response: “Metropolitan areas in the US where VMT [Note VMT not pollution] has doubled during the period 1982-1996 include...” And then it lists: “Charlotte, Las Vegas etc” where VMT has doubled, and also provides the most populous metro areas by growth in VMT (A12a/b). In none of these has even VMT doubled.

So EPA is asked for a listing of places where there has been a doubling of vehicle-caused pollution and answers with a statement about where VMT has doubled. It avoids a difficult question by answering a question it was not asked.

The EPA answers are all contrived and sleazy. They confirm impressions that this is an agency lacking in integrity, that it is so committed to its own illegitimate and ideological programs that no lie is too bald, no misrepresentation is too outrageous, and no logical dodge is too shifty to commit to print in their defense. The inability of the agency to cite any statutory authority for VMT reduction as a policy or for sponsorship of opposition to roadbuilding suggests it is outside the law in these actions. It is a rogue agency. An “Office of Policy and Reinvention”? One thing they have no need to reinvent at EPA is government lying.