Curbing diesel pollution.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The Bush administration has spent the past two years taking a chain saw to nearly every environmental law and regulation that got in the way of industry. Those efforts have been duly noted - and castigated - on these pages, so it's only fair that the administration receive praise for any move that greens its drab environmental credentials.

The Bush administration has proposed sweeping reductions in air pollution from diesel-powered off-road equipment - engines used in construction, agricultural and industrial equipment. Given the huge amount of harmful air pollution spewed by diesel engines, that's welcome news on the clean air front - perhaps the best since the Environmental Protection Agency finalized rules requiring cleaner-burning diesel trucks and buses several years ago.

The tougher standards would start with 2008 models, and all bulldozers, farm combines and other diesel-powered equipment not used on roads must have modern emission controls by 2014. Cleaner burning diesel fuel would have to contain 99 percent less sulfur by 2010.

Environmentalists are cheering the administration's move. A senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council said the proposal was far bigger than anything that had ever been done to control diesel pollution. Non-road diesel engines account for 44 percent of soot and 12 percent of smog-producing nitrogen oxides from all vehicles - as much as cars, trucks and buses. A single piece of heavy construction equipment can emit as much pollution as two dozen cars.

The health benefits of cutting emissions by 90 percent will be impressive. The EPA estimates that by 2030 its proposal will prevent 9,600 premature deaths, 16,000 heart attacks and 260,000 respiratory problems in children.

The economic benefits are also substantial. The White House Office of Management and Budget estimates that the health and environmental benefits amount to as much as $80 billion annually. The move poses little hardship on industry. Diesel manufacturers have a lengthy phase-in period that gives them abundant time to comply, and the cost of implementing the changes is estimated at a mere $1.5 billion. Meanwhile, oil refiners were already preparing to reduce sulfur levels in diesel fuel.

The tougher standards were championed by EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman. The former governor of New Jersey has sailed rough seas at the EPA's helm, with her environmental initiatives repeatedly torpedoed by the administration.

Whitman, as one environmentalist observed this week, "hit a home run" with the tougher diesel standards. Come 2008, the nation's air will be cleaner because of it.