Mike Kennedy, general counsel for the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), issued the following statement in response to the California Air Resources Board's (CARB) decision to “delay” enforcement of its off-road diesel emissions rule and hold a March 11 public meeting:
"We appreciate the opportunity to publicly air our concerns and expect Board officials will ultimately agree to significant changes to their off-road diesel rule. However, yesterday's decision to 'delay' enforcement of the rule until a federal waiver is issued is as legally meaningless as it is economically damaging. By committing to begin enforcement as soon as the federal government allows, the Board is only acknowledging legal reality, not providing relief.
"The state's own inventory data makes clear that off-road equipment operators will be well under the state's aggressive diesel emissions limits for years to come without this rule. Meanwhile, the decision to enforce the rule as soon as legally possible sends a chilling message to a construction industry that has lost over 116,000 jobs statewide this past year.
"Despite their acknowledgment that this rule will cripple the state's construction community, California officials seem more interested in providing meaningless gestures than they are in providing any relief from a rule whose only outcome will be to kill jobs.
"We intend to ask the members of the state Air Resources Board, which oversees the agency's activities, to immediately provide relief for thousands of construction workers from this unneeded rule."
Recent data gathered by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and plugged into CARB’s own economic model by AGC to estimate emissions in the future indicates there is no need for California contractors to retrofit their fleets of off-road diesel equipment or purchase new equipment before 2014 to meet CARB’s regulations concerning nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions, AGC said.
The association said state officials failed to anticipate the significant impact of the economic downturn on the construction industry. When state officials wrote their rule, for example, they estimated construction employment would grow by 8,000 jobs a year between 2006 and 2014. They also estimated that construction valuation would increase by $10 billion between 2007 and 2009.
In reality, the state has actually lost 330,000 construction jobs since 2006, a 35% decline, while real GDP originating from California's construction industry has dropped by $13 billion. In addition, a new analysis conducted by the Transportation Construction Coalition found that 68% of California's highway and transit builders expect the state's construction market to decline in 2010.
"Looking at the economic picture, it is clear the state's construction industry has little capacity to absorb the cost of replacing otherwise fully functional equipment," said Ken Simonson, the trade association's chief economist.
