The government is watching your tailpipe
Remote sensors will be on O.C. freeway onramps this week in a hunt for the highest polluting cars.
By PAT BRENNAN
The Orange County Register

The drivers won't see much – a white van, a camera, a mirror and some other odd-looking equipment – and they won't be stopped. But their cars will be smogged and, if they are heavy polluters, a letter will arrive in the mail.

Specialists with the region's smog control agency are in Orange County through Friday with their remote smog sensors, which shoot beams of infrared and ultraviolet light through the exhaust plumes from the tailpipes of passing cars.

The technology has been in use for years, but for the first time, the agency is not conducting experiments or fine-tuning. This time, they are serious about getting "gross polluters" off the road – that is, as long as the drivers agree.

"This is strictly a voluntary program," said Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District. "It's meant to be an adjunct to smog check."

The remote sensor shoots the light beams across a freeway on-ramp into a mirror on the other side. The beam cuts through the tailpipe emissions and bounces back from the mirror.

Equipment aboard the van reads levels of various pollutants – hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides – based on how the light beams are absorbed by the exhaust plume.

Meanwhile, a separate camera snaps a picture of the car's license plate.

If the car is a gross polluter, one that emits 100 to 500 times as much as an average car, a kind of invitation is mailed to the car's owner.

And the deal might be tempting. Car owners can receive up to $500 to make repairs, or $1,000 to scrap the vehicle.

If they earn a low income and are willing to replace their car with a low-emission used car, they can get $2,000.

The problem with the standard smog check every two years, Atwood said, is that many cars might be given stopgap repairs that don' last very long.

Yet the gross polluters emit a disproportionate amount of the smog that hovers over the Los Angeles basin, which includes Orange County.

And a car needn't be visibly smoking to be a gross polluter. "I don't know that I've seen one that was actually smoking," said Atwood, who has observed many of the remote sensing projects in operation.