EPA to enforce stricter rules on ‘glider’ trucks

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency reversed course late Thursday and announced it would enforce stricter pollution controls on freight trucks known as “gliders,” which emit dozens of times more soot and contaminants compared to those with new diesel engines.

In a three-page memo to his deputies, acting administrator Andrew Wheeler said he would withdraw the “no action assurance” the agency had given the manufacturers of glider trucks on the last day that his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, headed the EPA. That letter assured firms that they would not have to limit their annual production to 300 vehicles through the end of 2019.

The EPA initially proposed a rule last November to repeal tighter emissions standards for glider trucks, which had been set to take effect in January. An Obama-era regulation aimed at controlling soot and other pollutants, as well as greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change, the rule had the support of both public health advocates and some major trucking groups and engine manufacturers.

But it faced fervent opposition from a handful of companies that manufacture truck components called gliders and trailers. A glider, or body, is the front of a truck, including the cab, which fits over the engine. Trailers are the storage components that make up most of the length of a truck. Leading the charge against the new regulation was Fitzgerald Truck Sales, the Tennessee-based manufac-

turer that stood to benefit most from the rule’s repeal.

Fitzgerald, whose executives had met with Pruitt last May, had argued that the rule would disproportionately affect an industry that in 2015 produced roughly 10,000 gliders a year.

Environmental groups challenged the EPA’s “no action assurance” letter on July 17 in the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for an administrative stay as the court considered their emergency motion. A day later, the court granted the stay.

In his memo Wheeler noted that the agency only suspends enforcement in rare circumstances and that after consulting with EPA lawyers and policy experts, “I have concluded that the application of the current regulations to the glider industry does not represent the kind of extremely unusual circumstances that support the EPA’s use of enforcement discretion.”

Legal experts said that the risk of losing in court played a key role in Wheeler’s decision.

“This had all the hallmarks of a major loss,” Justin Savage, a partner at Sidley Austin specializing in environmental law, said Thursday. “This was so broadly cast this would have potentially circumscribed the agency’s ability to issue these kinds of letters in the future.”

Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, called Wheeler’s decision “a huge win for all Americans who care about clean air and human health.”

“EPA’s effort to create a loophole allowing more of them onto our roads was irresponsible and dangerous,” Krupp said in a statement late Thursday. “We hope their decision tonight to withdraw that loophole puts a firm and final end to this serious threat to our families’ health.”