from Mark Smith, Advocate, California Builders Alliance
TRASH TALK: California air regulators have spent the last year fighting the Trump administration over the state’s electric truck sales rules. Now, a new brawl is playing out closer to home.
Dozens of cities, counties and businesses are up in arms over proposed changes to the state’s clean truck standards, which the California Air Resources Board quietly introduced last month. The new rules would require waste haulers, tree trimmers, construction companies and other service providers with government contracts to meet the same electrification requirements as publicly owned fleets
That means that by 2030, all new vehicles purchased for fleets would have to be zero-emission, in line with the state’s ambitious climate goals. (Local governments can alternatively opt to gradually increase the overall percentage of their fleet that is zero-emission each year.)
It’s a development that caught many county and city officials completely off guard, especially since California failed to secure an EPA waiver, which it needs to enforce zero-emissions purchasing requirements on private companies.
City officials and fleet operators say they’re also frustrated that CARB staff haven’t held a public meeting since proposing the controversial changes, leaving many local governments and businesses they partner with in the dark — and worried that a shrinking pool of eligible contractors could drive up costs and eventually trickle down to taxpayers.
“We're very upset and very surprised that they took this route,” said Damon Conklin, a transportation lobbyist for the League of California Cities, which represents most cities and towns across the state.
The move comes less than a year after President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans revoked federal approval for California’s electric sales mandates on car and truck manufacturers, which would have required companies to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission models before phasing out fossil fuel options in 2035 and 2036, respectively. In doing so, they upended a key pillar of the state’s plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade.
The federal action, however, doesn’t prevent California from requiring municipal governments to add more electric and hydrogen vehicles to their fleets. CARB’s proposal to expand those rules to private companies that hold public contracts would capture a larger share of the emissions pie and, CARB argues, prevent scenarios in which local officials could get around the rules by outsourcing services to avoid clean vehicle standards.
Conklin countered that the agency’s new, proposed changes would shift the burden of enforcing the rules from CARB to cash-strapped locals and create legal challenges by endangering long-term contracts that cities and counties have already agreed to.
He argued that the amendment is an attempt by CARB to make up for the rules that have been lost and salvage some of their authority.
“I think there's some reputational redemption here by CARB,” he said. “I think there's pressure from this administration, as far as its legacy, and they’re, unfortunately, putting it on the backs of cities.”
While the amendment would affect a wide range of services, waste hauling fleets have emerged as a flashpoint in the debate.
Veronica Pardo, executive director of the Resource Recovery Coalition of California (RRCC), a trade association representing trash collection and recycling companies, said that roughly 85 percent of the state’s local governments contract with private operators to manage their waste disposal, and that neither officials nor companies are prepared to implement the changes.
Pardo warned that in some parts of the state, especially rural communities, the infrastructure is not yet in place to accommodate electric waste haulers, which tend to be heavier and require recharging. She said that the added expense of investing in new electric trucks will also show up on residents' garbage bills.
“The worst case scenario would be potentially having to litigate [against CARB],” Pardo said, if the changes are enacted. “I've been with this association now for coming up on 12 years, and we've never experienced anything like the disruption that we would anticipate for our members and the communities that they're serving.”
CARB spokesperson Lindsay Buckley said in a statement that the amendments are not set in stone and that staff are meeting with impacted groups “to fully understand their concerns.” The agency has until August 1 to finalize the rule.
Not everyone is opposed to the regulatory agency’s proposal, though. Environmental groups have largely thrown their support behind the amendments, arguing that CARB is within its legal rights to apply the rules to private companies that contract with state and local governments.
Bill Magavern, policy director at the Coalition for Clean Air, argued that the regulation was never meant to include a loophole for outsourced fleets.
“The rule always applied to municipal fleets, whether they are owned and operated by the government agencies or whether they contract out for them,” he said. — AN